


DUKE 


UNIVERSITY 


LIBRARY 











MORAL USES OF 


DARK THINGS 


BY 


HORACE BUSHNELL 


LITERARY VARIETIES 
Ui 


Centenary Edition 


NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1910 





Div. S, 


EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THE 
EDITION OF 1881 


Or the three volumes by Dr. Bushnell now produced 
under the general title of “Literary Varieties” two 
have long been out of print and one is new. The lat- 
ter, “Building Eras in Religion,” consists of various 
articles and addresses which have been printed in some 
fugitive form, and which Dr. Bushnell himself desig- 
nated under the heading of Reliquie as the material 
for a book to be published after his death. Grouping 
these three books together now as a collection of his 
miscellaneous writings, we would emphasize the dis- 
tinction between these and his theological works, these 
“the spontaneous overplus and literary by-play of a 
laborious profession,” the latter the embodiment of that 
profession itself. They so richly represent and, as it 
were, personify the varied interests of his life as to form 
in themselves, if rightly interpreted, a biography neces- 
sary to the completeness of any which has been or could 
be written. As an aid to such interpretation, a few facts 
and thoughts may here be fitly presented. 

The oration on Work and Play, often spoken of as 
the supreme literary product of his life, followed closely 
upon a profound private religious experience and was 


EDITOR’S PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1881 


written and delivered in that year of theologic tempest 
which threatened to overwhelm him as a heretic. But 
its atmosphere is serene, the high tenor of its literary 
inspiration unbroken by a note of strife. His ideal of 
a literary era painted in its closing pages seems to be 
that it shall emerge from a period of struggle under 
a religious impulse, as his own had done. The same 
thought is conveyed with equal force and beauty in his 
address on “Our Obligations to the Dead,” in the vol- 
ume on “Building Eras in Religion,” wherein he de- 
picts the future literary age for which the great strug- 
gle of our war has, he thinks, furnished fit training and 
noble subjects, religion being still “the only sufficient 
fertilizer of genius as it is the only real emancipator of 
man.” 

In the first volume, Work and Play, we have the 
“Age of Homespun,” which contains the scenery and 
the dramatis persone of his childhood; “The Growth 
of Law,” in which we find the impress of his law stud- 
ies; “The Founders Great in their Unconsciousness,” 
wherein the strength of his own hereditary Puritan 
consciousness is revealed; “The Day of Roads,” the di- 
rect product of his European journey; “City Plans,” 
so closely connected with his work for Hartford and its 
Park; and “Religious Music,” whose melodious thought 
and rhythmical style seem to date back to that time 
when, as a boy, he taught himself by a reverse process 
from his mother’s song how to read music. One address 
on “Agriculture at the East’ has been withdrawn, as 
superseded by the progress of history, and in its place 


EDITOR’S PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1881 


we have now that on “Barbarism the First Danger,” 
the first public address by which he became widely 
known. Its truths were unpopular truths—needed, but 
unwelcome to the sensitiveness of new communities. As 
long as we have a frontier the article may be useful. 

These articles, taken all together, evince a large 
amount of reading and study. Apart from the refer- 
ences to historical works, many of which were consulted 
in preparation for certain subjects, we find everywhere 
evidences that his mind was keenly alive to the inspira- 
tions of the great thought-makers, from Plato and 
Epictetus down to Bacon and Shakespeare. Books of 
systematized thought were less attractive to him than 
those in which thought is offered in free and fluent 
forms, capable of transmutation. The works of scien- 
tists and travelers, whose subject-matter is necessarily 
in the concrete, had special value to his mind as offer- 
ing food for thought. He read more than is commonly 
believed, largely of books by the few master-minds, but 
also freely of the best present writers,—very little of 
metaphysical or philosophical books. 

The volume on the “Moral Uses of Dark Things” 
is not, as might be supposed, a logical treatise designed 
to solve the enigmas of life, but a series of observations 
made in a curious and inquiring spirit upon some of 
the strange and mysterious provisions of creation. It 
was as early as the year 1846 that Dr. Bushnell first 
had his attention called to some of these morally unac- 
countable aspects of human life and nature, and he then 
preached sermons on the uses of deformity and of phys- 


ATIBC4O 


EDITOR’S PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1881 


ical danger. From time to time he observed new phases 
of the same riddle, and tore the disguise of a curse from 
many a blessing. At last he consolidated the fruit of his 
observations in our second volume, a subtle and curious 
contribution to the thought of the time, but one so un- 
pretending of system as to be properly classified with 
his “Literary Varieties.” 

In the fact that the material of the third volume, 
entitled “Building Eras in Religion,” was selected by 
Dr. Bushnell himself as that which he was willing to 
have stand when he was gone, we have his indorsement 
of it as being not inconsistent with his ripest thought. 
Notwithstanding this the articles were some of them 
among his earliest, as the date given with each will 
show. 

It is through these three volumes that he will be best 
known to the world in his personality asa man. They 
are both flower and fruit, and not only illustrate but are 
the growth, the ceaseless activity, the ever-varying form 
of life in one of the most living of men. 

Eniror. 

1881. 


Since the above was written another book, “The Spirit 
in Man,” has been published (1903), a book which also 
contains much of miscellaneous material. 


Epiror. 
1908. 


AUTHOR’S PREFACE. 


It would have been easy to construct a treatise on 
the general subject. presented in these~ essays, and 
there was a considerable temptation to do it, in the 
fact that our treatises of Natural Theology are so com- 
monly at fault, in tracing what they call their “ argu- 
ment from design ”—assuming that Physical Uses are 
the decisive tests, or objects, of all the contrivance to 
be looked for in God’s works. Whereas they are re- 
solvable, in far the greater part, by no such tests, but 
only by their Moral Uses, which are, in fact, the last 
ends of God in every thing, including even his Physi- 
cal Uses themselves. Still the defect here specified 
will as easily be corrected by these essays, on so many 
promiscuous topics, as by a regular treatise, and they 
have the advantage of being each a subject by itself. 
And, tosecure this advantage, they are thrown together 
in a manner as neglectful of system as possible. They 


~ AUTHOR’S PREFACE, 


do not make a book to be read in course, but a book to 
be taken up as the moods of the mind, and the rising 
of this or that question, may prepare an affinity for 
them. For there is scarcely a year that passes with 
out somehow recalling every one of these topics, or 
topics closely related, in a manner that prepares to new 
interest, or awakens fresh curiosity. 


CONTENTS. 


PaGE 
L—Of Night and Sleep..... paraiso MU ajavarelaiefoie ater sista) wleleta steven le: 
II.—Of Want and Waste......... siemeataleiatciai ialsiapeels mieeeiaieie 29 
IIL —Of Bad Government.............20-- Stainishatsleleia siesta siOe 
IV.—Of Oblivion, or Dead History....... sielemieterceporetnsy siete at %3 
V.—Of Physical Pain............. FCO FOSS aC ORG cocci 95 
WiE—OFf Physical Danger. ; . ./.(...<<clacweiase sisuoe's saae senets 120 
VII.—Of the Conditions of Solidarity................00005 142 
VIII.—Of Non-Intercourse between Worlds.................. 165 
XE — OD WInkE? 5.0 oa ec ciniwsles ciels wis aJglerere Giateinicier aa aiaval eiatote 188 
X.—Of Things Unsightly and Disgustful.................. 210 
XI.—Of Plague and Pestilence. .........cesccecccccacceece 232 
XII.— Of Insanity .......... a teisietaioial d/ajelsiaiaiatelaisiovalsistelsialcta .. 249 
XIII.—Of the Animal Infestations...... Si nieiajstele etalelaiciereien stare 274 
XIV.—Of Distinctions of Color....... aeiavdiaioare\win celehsie ms erenpoe - 296 
XV.—Of the Mutabilities of Life............ aR bMeddar eae ard) 


VOL GHG SA ioc cic w alate dic uw bniaielaiciclelealwicieuielsisuisiaeieinied'elee 844 





OAL PR 


4 


MORAL USES 


or 


PA ee ee IN Ce 


I. 
OF NIGHT AND SLEEP, 


In proposing a series of articles on the moral uses of 
things, particularly the dark things of the world, I 
assume the reality of final causes without argument. 
Our pantheistic literature, and many of our late 
philosophers, it is well known, disallow final causes 
altogether, treating them in fact with disrespect, as 
being only feeble and fond conceits that have amused 
the fancy of religious people heretofore, but are now to 
be dismissed. I do not write for such. But what we 
all see with our eyes I think I have some right to as- 
sume, namely, that this whole frame of being is. bedded 
in Mind. Matter itself is not more evident than the 
mind that shapes it, fills it, and holds it in training for 
its uses. Philosophy itself, call it positive or by any 
other name, is possible only in the fact, that the world is 
cognate with mind and cast in the molds of intelligence. 
And then, as it belongs inherently to mind that it 


8 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 


must have its ends, the All-Present mind must have 
reference to ends, and the whole system of causes must 
at bottom be, exactly as we see it to be, a system 
of final causes. That the philosophers discard them 
ought, accordingly, to cost us no concern, for they havea 
wondrously copious ability to assert themselves ; which 
they have kept on doing and will, rolling in their tidal 
sweep of conviction from every point of time, and all 
structural things, and organic workings of the creation. 
Speculation can as well keep out the sea. 

The dark things of which I am to speak are such, in 
general, as have some relation more or less perceptible 
to, or connection with, Moral Evil, which is, in fact, the 
the night-side of the creation. All the enigmas and 
lowering difficulties we meet are shadows from this; — 
for it is to meet the conditions and prepare the discipline 
of this, that so many rough, unseemly kinds of furni- 
ture are required. Pursuing the logical method, I 
ought, therefore, to begin with an introductory chapter 
on moral evil itself, or, at least, on the uses of that pro- 
bational training of liberty that involves so great peril, 
and the certainty of such unspeakable disaster. But 
I prefer, on the whole, not to observe the logical 
method, lest, by seeming to be engaged in the heavy 
work of a treatise, I make all the subjects heavy and 
dry in proportion. They have each an interest more 
fresh and peculiar when taken by itself. I propose 
to call them up, therefore, in a perfectly miscella- 
neous way, taking the lighter and less troublesome, 
and the darker and more difficult—those which lie in 


OF NIGHT AND SLEEP. 9 


nature and its appointments, those which lie in the 
fortunes of individual and social experience, and those 
which relate to the scheme of Providence—without re- 
gard to order, and as mere convenience may direct. In 
this way I propose, for the present article, a subject 
not generally felt to be at all dark or difficult, and only 
just over the line, when it is more closely and thought- 
fully considered, namely, Wight and Sleep. 

I put the two together because they are so closely 
related, one being a fact of external nature, provided 
for in the astronomic appointments of nature, the other 
being a corresponding appointment of our psychologi- 
eal system itself, only somewhat more absolute than 
the other. For, within the polar circles, the astronom- 
ic night is continuous for six long months, while the 
psychological necessities of sleep maintain their period 
unchanged, and the human populations are obliged to 
seize a night about once in twenty-four hours, when no 
such night is provided by the diurnal revolutions. In 
which we see that our human body and mind have a 
night appointment in them, more unvarying and fixed 
than the planetary night itself So that if we raise 
the question whether our psychologic nature is timed 
by the planetary order, or the planetary order timed 
to fit our psychologic nature, we are thrown upon the 
latter supposition, by the fact that our sleep has reasons 
more absolute and more inherent than the reasons even 
of the astronomic order itself. Still the night we have 
without, and the night we inherently want, are really 
coincident, in all the more habitable parts of the earth 

1* 


10 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


But if the question be, why it is, either that any 
such institution of night is appointed, or any such 
want as sleep prescribed, we encounter some difficulty. 
As regards the former, it is no sufficient answer to say 
that the revolution of the earth, turning it away just 
half the time from the sun, creates a night by astro- 
nomic necessity; for the astronomic system might, 
perhaps, have been differently organized, or so as to 
maintain a perpetual day; every habitable orb, for 
example, having for its sun a vast concave orb shining 
perpetually round it, and creating neither night, nor 
shadow, nor region of polar cold. As regards the latter, 
too, the want of rest and sleep, it does not appear that 
our body and mind might not both have been so 
organized as to be capable of perpetual action, without 
either exhaustion or weariness. And since we are put 
here, not for rest, but for action, by that only winning 
the required character, and becoming what is given 
us to be, why are we not made capable of sleepless 
activity? If our errand here is the trial and training 
of our liberty, we are neither being tried nor trained, 
when our very liberty itself is sunk in a state of un- 
consciousness. Such a state wants relativity, we might 
say, to the errand on whicl. we are sent, and the time 
thus occupied is lost time. And when the creation 
puts out its lights and commands us away into a state 
of oblivion, what is that oblivion but a state in which 
we are to drop, and even forget, oar errand ¢ 

Besides, there will appear to many to be something 
fearful and forbidding in the expression of darkness. 


OF NIGHT AND SLEEP. 11 


Children are commonly afraid of the dark, and even 
Holy Scripture makes the state of “outer darkness” 
an image of all that is most terrible in God’s retribu 
tions. And what shall we say of that mental and 
bodily state in which the senses are shut up,and reason 
itself gone out, and nothing left of a nature so high in 
dignity but a mere palpitating clod? What do we 
say of one who habitually drowns his higher nature in 
a similar condition of stupefaction by the excesses of 
intemperance? And if this be a crime, as it is by the 
general consent of mankind, is it not remarkable that 
half the world’s population is, all the while, laid pros- 
trate and senseless, by a soporific planned for, in the 
economy both of heaven and of their own bodies ? 

Besides, night is itself the opportunity of crime, and 
we even speak of crimes in a general way as being 
deeds of darkness, 


“Oh treacherous night! 
Thou lendest thy ready vail to every treason, 
And teeming mischiefs thrive beneath thy shade.” 


Incendiaries, thieves, robbers, assassins, go to their 
deeds under shelter of the night, and even prefer a 
specially dark night. Adulteries are stolen pleasures 
of the night. It is in the night that great conspiracies 
are hatched. Where crimes are committed by day, 
the absconding is commonly by night. And there is 
still another reason for this crowding of crime into the 
dark hours, in the fact that the world is then asleep, 
and the particular victims selected will then be locket 


12 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


in a state of unconsciousness—inobservant as in death 
itself, and passive to whatever wrong will make them 
its prey. Since the world, then, is made, as we know 
it to be, for the trial of creatures who will be in wrong, 
why is it made to cover wrong-doing a full half of the 
time, and furnish it an opportunity so convenient? 
Or, if we must be creatures of sleep, why is it that 
the law of sleep is not made absolute upon all, so that 
the bad shall be taken into custody by it, as the inno- 
cent and good are made defenseless by it? for then the 
nights could settle down upon the world as times of 
truce for all wrong-doing. When, too, we create a 
special police for the night, what is the implication, but 
that we impeach the care of Providence by proposing 
to supply one of its considerable defects ourselves? 
As if it belonged to us to assume the defense of inno- 
cence, now that Providence has taken away its shield! 

Is there not, also, another deed of darkness, not com- 
monly so named, but thought of with eminent respect, 
and which, partly for that reason, is, morally speaking, 
more harmful? I refer to the untimely shows and 
bewildering dissipations of what is called fashionable 
society. It is very true that we do not want the whole 
twelve hours for sleep. And the evening, after the great 
works of the day are finished, is a time favorable above 
all others to the genuine pleasures of society. But this 
is not the way of those who rule the mode and claim 
the chief honors of society. It is not the faces and 
voices of friends, or the lively cheer of intellectual and 
social play, that meets their idea; they are commonly 


OF NIGHT AND SLEEP. 13 


incapable of any so fine sort of pleasure. They do not 
so much care to be freshened, as to be in figure. Natu- 
valness they despise, and the more artificially got up 
every thing may be for the desired show, the better. 
Their time must be taken against nature; for society. 
they think, would be a tame affair, submitted to the 
appointments of astronomy. And what so fit time, or 
time so finely exclusive, is there, as when the common 
world is stilled in sleep? By the brilliancy of their 
lights, and by figures floating in dress and glittering in 
gems, can they not make a show more dazzling than 
day? Entertainment is the same thing as expense, and 
a crowd they call society. Their time begins just 
where the evening ends, and the throng disperses for 
sleep, when sleep might better end. The young men 
and women of sixty—for, in this high tier of fashion, it 
is not permissible te be old—are too bitterly fagged and 
jaded to sleep, and the really young have their heads 
too full of excitement. Sleep, at least, is long in com- 
ing, and comes more as a fever than as a refreshment. 
At length, when the dew is dried up and every bird is 
wearied with its song, the young frivolity, be it man or 
woman, rises to begin another day. The brain is sore; 
the day is dull or only enlivened by fretfulness. There 
is no relish for either business or study, and no capaci- 
ty for it; and where the dissipation is frequent, no 
habit of order and right industry can survive. Life 
will become as trivial as it is artificial. 

What substitute would have been sougif, if no such 
opportunity of night had been given, we can not pre- 


‘14 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


tend to say; but this we sufficiently know, that no kind 
of substitute could produce a more wide-spread, practi- 
cally immense demoralization, in the same high -ireles 
of life. It changes, in fact, the general cast of society. 


' There is, besides, no mode of character so heartless and 


false and cruel, as that of high fashion, or so totally 
| opposite to all the noblest, best ends of living. 


Going on from this point, now, to speak of the moral 
uses of night and sleep, we have it, first of all, to say, 
as regards the bad opportunities they give, that such 
opportunities are not bad, but are only made so by the 
abuses of wrong; for what best thing is there which 
wrong may not abuse? The very system of moral lib- 
erty supposes that wrong is going to have, or at least, 
make, its opportunities. And since we are all in wrong 
as being under evil, how shall we be made to under- 
stand more impressively what is in all wrong, than 
when we and society are its victims? We are put in 
moral society, in fact, to act and be acted upon as in 
terms of duty—existing alone, no terms of duty would 
be given—and a great part of the benefit is to be, that 
we get revelations of wrong, and become so revolted by 
it as to be turned away from it. And what revelations 
can be more effective than to see it stealing upon inno- 
cence in deeds of midnight robbery and murder, show- 
ing how cruel and cowardly and detestably mean it is; 
or to see it crowding society out of heaven’s times, and 
turning it into a pageant of the night, as remote as 
possible from the sobrieties of reason, and the sweet 
simplicity of virtue? 


OF NIGHT AND SLEEP. 15 


Consider, next, how differently tempered a reali of 
bad minds becomes, under the ordinance of night and 
sleep, from what it otherwise would be. Always 
fresh and strong, incapable of exhaustion as the spring 
of a watch, moral ideas would seldom get near enough 
to be felt. Evil is proud, stiffening itself always against 
the restrictions of God, and trying to be God itself. 
Therefore only a little modicum of capacity is given it, 
which runs out in asingle day. After twelve or six- 
teen hours, the man that rose in the morning, full of 
might, as if a young eternity were in him, begins to 

flag, his nervous energy is spent, his limbs are heavy, 
his motions want spirit and precision. If he tries, for 
some particular reason, to hold on over whole days, his 
hands grow weaker, his eyelids more heavy, till, at 
length, he is obliged to resign himself to his fate, and 
drops, a merely unconscious lump, on the couch of the 
sleeper. Every day this lesson of frailty is given him. 
The grass that is cut down by the mower’s scythe does 
not sooner wither and dry up, than the strength of the 
mower himself. We take our very capacity thus in 
little loans of only a few hours, and when the time 
has gone, we fall back into God’s -bosom again to be 
recruited. Were it not for this wise and morally beau- 
tiful arrangement, we might be as stiff in wrong as so 
many evil angels. 

Having only this short run of power, we are humbled 
to a softer key. We do not feel or act as we should, if 
we could rush on our way and have our sin as a law 
of ceaseless momentum, for the whole period of ou 


16 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 


life. For we are like an engine that is started off on 
the track by itself; the fuel and water will soon be 
exhausted, and then it must stop. But, if it could ge 
-n without fuel or water, it would even whirl itself 
across a continent and pitch itself into the sea. So, if, 
Yeing loose in evil, we could rush interminably on, never 
vo be spent or recruited by sleep, our bad momentum 
would itself drive us on, till we are hurried by the goal 
of life itself. We should be hard in our self-will 
beyond conception; our very ambitions and purposes 
would fly, bullet-wise, at their mark; consideration, con- 
ciliation, candor, patience, would all be driven out of the 
world by the remorseless persistency of our habit. Hap- 
pily it is not so. We are stopped every few hours and 
brought to nothingness. Perhaps we do not say that 
we are made little, but, what is far better, we practi- 
cally are so to ourselves, whether we think it or not; 
for feeling is often truer than thought, and takes the 
type of fact when thought does not. We are not 
bad gods or demons in our impetuosity, but men, men 
that go to sleep as children do and must. Being spaced 
off in this manner by stoppages, we consent to limits. 
We are softened and gentled in feeling, more perhaps 
than we would like to be. It is difficult not to be 
sometimes tender. Reason will sometimes get a chance 
to speak, and sometimes even preaching will meet a 
fair possibility. The tremendous passion for gain, and, 
speaking more inclusively, all that belongs to the 
world-spirit, and the spell it works in minds under 
evil, is broken every few hours by the counter-spell of 


OF NIGHT AND SLEEP. 1? 


sleep, and so the infatuation is restricted. So that, 
having this appointment in it, we can see that God has 
prepared even the world itself to be a corrector of 
worldliness. Even the astronomic revolutions he sets 
running as a mill against it. He buries the world in 
darkness that we may not see it. He takes the soul 
off into a world of unconsciousness and dream to break 
up its bad enchantment. He palsies the hand to make 
it let go, palsies even the brain to stifle its infatuations. 
Were it not for this I verily believe that what we call 
the world would get to be a kind of demoniacal posses- 
sion. 

In the same way al: the various malignities of evil 
passion are either extirpated or greatly softened. After 
some years, prejudices begin to be tired of being slept 
over. Jealousies rankle as long as they stay, but they 
get tired of staying, when we do not stay with them, 
but go to sleep over them. We can not hate an enemy 
save intermittently, but have to begin again every 
morning—which we have less and less appetite for, 
and finally come to like that morning best which does 
not begin at all. Were it not for this arrangement, 
our malignities might burnus up. But the taking away 
of our consciousness is a kind of compulsory Sabbath, 
or truce of God. No hatred burns in the unconscious 
man. No revenge or jealousy lowers on his face in 
that soft hour of oblivion. If he went to bed heated 
by an ugly conversation, if he was severe and bitter in 
his judgments, if all charities were scorched away by 
his fierce denunciations, he will rise in the morning 


18 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


cool and sweet as the morning, and the gentle cheer of 
his voice will show that he is clear of his bad mood, 
and likes to have it known. A man must be next +c 
a devil who wakes angry. After his unconscious 
Sabbath he begins another day, and every day is Mon- 
day. How beautifully thus are we drawn, by this kind 
economy of sleep, to the exercise of all good disposi- 
tions! The acrid and sour ingredients of evil, the 
grudges, the wounds of feeling, the hypochondriae sus- 
picions, the black torments of misanthropy, the morose 
fault-findings, are so far tempered and sweetened by 
God’s gentle discipline of sleep, that we probably do 
not even conceive how demoniacally bitter they would 
be, if no such kind interruptions broke their spell. 

It is also a great thing for us, as regards the interest 
and right ordering of life, that we are made into 
chapters in this manner, and are not left to that tedious 
kind of way which we sometimes find in a book that 
goes on to its end without headings of transition, or 
resting-places of cessation. We go by dates and days, 
and a year is three hundred and sixty-five chapters of 
life. By these dates we remember ourselves, and with- 
out them could scarcely remember ourselves at all. 
Time itself would only be whisked away, as the trees 
are when we are whirled through a forest. And so we 
should have as little note of the present as memory of 
the past. It is not so when we come to the end of a 
day and stop. In one view it is a complete chapter, 

and we ourselves are substantially ended with it. 
- Then, having passed away into the nowhere of sleep, 


OF NIGHT AND SLEEP. 19 


we come out new-born in the morning—other and yet 
the same—-to begin another more advanced chapter. 
The waking-point is different from the point where we 
vanished ; and it is one of the pleasant things we think 
of, that to-day is going to be different from yesterday. 
If we really thought it was going to be the same day 
over again, we should be mortally sick of it in advance. 
No, we are going to do something, set on something, 
have or obtain something, in advance of what belonged 
to yesterday. And why not something better, best of 
all, wisest and holiest? We do not always ask that 
question, but the fresh life of our new morning has at 
least some better affinity in it, as the flowers that have 
blossomed in the night are more fragrant than the old 
ones that have, all, the smell of yesterday in them. 
Not every morning is God’s morning thus in the soul ; 
but how much closer is that holier dawn to feeling, 
and easier to be conceived, for the new-born life that 
has opened so many chapters of morning experience. 
As one day of the year is certain to be Christmas, there 
ought to be some day in such a calendar of days when 
Christ is born to the soul—a sublime Anno Domini, at 
which all after-dates begin. 

Sleep also greatly enlarges our mental experience, 
giving us a different sense of ourselves and our im- 
mortal capabilities. I make nothing of the argument 
from sleep and a return to consciousness in waking, 
for the fact of a resurrection and a future life. The 
faith of immortality depends on a sense of it be- 
gotten, not on an argument for it concluded. And 


20 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


here is the office of sleep, that it wakens the sense, 
while it does not furnish the argument. It is just that 
kind of experience that makes us, I might almost say, 
completely other and different to ourselves. If our 
life were a continuous waking state, fifty or seventy 
years long, having light and day to correspond, it 
might be difficult to say what we should be, but we 
certainly should not be what we are. Our sleep is not 
only a great mystery to philosophers, but a practical 
mystery to all men, even such as never had a thought 
of it. We are carried by it into a new world, as dis- 
tinct from that of our waking hours as if our spirit 
were translated. The body is alive only as a vegetable 
lives; the senses are closed, the soul itself is uncon- 
scious, displaying yet its incapacity to cease from 
action. The thoughts fly as swiftly as when we are 
awake, and sometimes a great deal farther and higher; 
we remember, imagine, hope, fear, hurrying on through 
this and unknown worlds, creating scenes of glory and 
pain, shuddering in perils, exulting in deliverances, all 
unreal, yet for the time reality itself. The immortal 
element strives on, incapable of cessation, determined 
never to cease; displaying its inherent, essential, self 
asserting eternity. And so we become, as it were, a 
different self, that we may know the self we are; for 
if we make as little of our dreams or sleep-thoughts 
as we may, they do, at least, show us the fearfully sub- 
lime activity of our nature, that must still act, when 
we have no longer any will to action. What a dis- 
covery is it thus to a child. when first he begins to 


OF NIGHT AND SLEEP. 21 


reach after the distinction of a dream! He has been 
somewhere, he knows not where; he has seen strange 
people, he knows not who: only the vanishing smiles 
and dimples playing on his face told more of the para- 
dise he was in, hearing their sweet voices and looking 
on their beautiful faces, than he can even begin to 
stammer about when he wakes. If he was unwell or 
overcharged with food, he has probably fared differ- 
ently ; bad creatures have chased him, strange mon- 
sters have made strange noises, ogres have taken him 
in their teeth. Startled out of sleep, he clings in a 
tremor to his mother, and when she shows him that 
there is nobody in the room, that it was only a thought 
in his head, a dream, what isa dream? At that ques- 
tion he is working visibly for days, till the dream ceases 
more and more to be a fearful creature, and he begins 
to imagine that a dream is a kind of nobody or 
nothing that came out of himself. What a mystery is 
he thus beginning to be to himself? And just so are 
we all passing out, so to speak, into this other-world 
state and returning, as many times as we have seen 
days, yet knowing nothing of it still, save that we get 
no understanding at all by our visits. Perhaps we are 
so dull as never to have had a question about the 
mystery. No matter, we are none the less altered by 
it. This double nature, capable of a double existence, 
is not the same it would be if we made no such excur- 
sions into unimagined states and worlds. It is great, 
greater than we can even think, and reaches farther 
than we can definitely know. Sleep is a spiritualizer, — 


po MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


thus, in the constitution of nature itself. By it the 
capacity of other modes of existence is made familiar. 
Saying nothing of the faith of immortality, we get a 
sense in it of ourselves that very nearly contains that 
faith. It is scarcely possible, in this view, to overrate 
the importance of it in the moral training of souls. 
Meantime, night as much enlarges the knowledge 
we get of the world as sleep the knowledge we get of 
ourselves. Perpetual sunlight and day would have 
kept us in a very small circle of discovery; for, as the 
vail of unconsciousness drawn over the soul in sleep 
reveals the depths of our spiritual nature to itself, aud 
makes it a mystery of vastness and immortal grandeur, 
so the night of the sphere reveals innumerable other 
spheres, and peoples the sky with worlds of glory 
otherwise undiscovered. At this point of possibility 
all the discoveries of astronomic science begin. And 
the infinitude of God’s reaim begins at this point to be 
felt, apart from all science. We are no more shut in, 
or cornered, in a small triangle of knowledge, where 
sun and moon and earth are the mere-stone boundaries 
of the All; but we go out to look upon, or apprehend, 
or rather to be apprehended by, a real universe, in 
God’s own measures. And this we do as truly before 
science begins as after. Enough that we are made to 
think areal Everywhere. We may fall into no specu- 
lations about the population or non-population of 
these realms; still the sky will mean something like 
“heaven,” or heaven something like that, and the 
word “celestial” will get a place in all languages for 


OF NIGHT AND SLEEP. 23 


powers divine, and creatures of a supramundane 
quality. Our moral nature will be raised in order, 
too, by the sense of its religious affinity with other 
beings and worlds. This, too, by means of the night 
—‘“night unto night showeth forth knowledge.” 


“Tn her starry shade 
Of dim and solitary loveliness, 
I learned the language of another world.” 


Sometimes we shall be oppressed, no doubt, by this 
dread immensity of worlds, and fall back into im- 
pressions of our insignificance that quite disable us. 
But it will be a salutary oppressiveness; for the im- 
mensity felt is but the type of God, and the sublime 
purity and order it displays make it only a type the 
more attractive that it represents our ideals, when the 
distractions and deformities we meet here below repre- 
sent only the moral disorder and conscious guilt of our 
practice. We get an idea thus of God which very nearly 
asserts itself, and are brought to conceive a glorious 
unknown society to whom we are somehow related. 
All the conditions of our moral existence are enlarged 
and exalted. And this we say, be it observed, not in the 
sense that we have got arguments to be so used, but in 
the sense that, being constituted as we are, we are taken 
by these inevitable impressions, and have them more or 
less distinctly felt in their practical reality. As tenants 
of a star-world, we are not the same beings we should 
be in a world of mere sunlight. 

We have still a different kind of benefit in the fact 


24 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


that night and sleep bring us times of revision or moral 
reflection, such as greatly promote the best uses of 
existence. To live in a perpetual day, and have what 
we call the hours of business ceaseless even as the flow 
of rivers, would leave us no room for reflection. We 
should be like seas in the trade-winds, never getting 
still enough to reflect any thing. Our soul would be 
blind to itself by reason of the perpetual seeing of our 
eyes. God, therefore, draws a curtain over his light, 
checks the busy hours of work and the turmoil of trade, 
and recalls us to moods of silence and meditative thought- 
fulness in the depths of our own spirit. Many of ns, I 
know, are sadly indisposed to this, and, in one view, 
wretchedly incapable of it. Yet, when their day is 
ended, even such will naturally fall into a different 
mood. If the day has not gone well, and they are much 
wearied by its engagements, it will be difficult some- 
times not to meet the question, who they are that they 
should be wrestling in such struggles, It is quite 
natural, too, for them, going over the day, to ask what, 
after all, it amounts to. And then it will be strange 
if they do not sometimes go a little further, and ask 
whither they are going, on what point moving, in such 
a life. Deeper and more serious natures, even though 
sadly imbued with guilt, will be turned almost of course 
to some kind of review. Another day is gone, its works 
are ended. Ambition has spent the fever of another 
day. Pleasure has exhausted her charms. Idleness 
itself is weary. And now, as the world grows still and 
excitement dies away, the mind calls off its activity and 


OF NIGHT AND SLEEP. 25 


turns it inward on itself. It hears no call of God, 
perhaps, and thinks of doing nothing as aduty. Buta 
pause has come, and something it must think of, for it 
can not stand still. Detained by nothing now on hand, 
it travels far, and makes a large review. It takes in, aa 
it were by snatches, other worlds. It touches the 
springs of its own immortal wants, and they answer 
quick and heavily. Whatever wrong has been com- 
mitted stalks into the mind with an appalling tread. If 
God is a subject unwelcome, and guilt another even 
more unwelcome, the moral nature has so great ad- 
vantage now, and, withal, so great sensibility, that 
the door of the soul is held open to things not welcome. 
All those highest and most piercing truths that most 
deeply concern the great problem of life will often come 
nigh to thoughtful men in the dusk of their evenings 
and their hours of retirement to rest. The night is the 
jadgment bar of the day. About all the reflection 
there is in the world is due, if not directly to the night, 
to the habit prepared and fashioned by it. 

We sometimes wake, too, in the dead of night, and 
it must be a very hard man that can read these night- 
thoughts which are not poems, without being stirred 
by convictions more or less appalling. The man is still 
on his pillow, the world is still even to sublimity, the 
eyes are shut, or at least see nothing if they are open. 
Perhaps it is some crime that has murdered sleep, and 
perhaps not. Great thoughts, and wonderfully distinct, 
crowd in, stirring great convictions—all the more wel- 


come to the good man, to the bad how terrible! 
a 


26 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


“‘Thou has visited me in the night,” says David, “thou 
has tried me.” And again, “ My reins instruct me in 
in the night-season.” What lessons of wisdom have 
every man’s reins given him in the depths of the night! 
What revelations of thought have come into his mind! 
things how high, how close to other worlds! reproofs 
how piercing, in authority how nearly divine! 

In all these specifications, it will be seen that I am 
not looking after any kind of argument for the truths 
of religion, or the vindication of God, but showing 
simply how we are attempered, practically, to the best 
things; that also, perhaps, without knowing it. Night 
and sleep are not a contrivance to furnish us with 
thoughts or notions, afterward to be applied to the 
moral uses of life, but are fomentations rather directly 
applied, producing, in that manner, modulations of 
feeling and mitigations of temper, such as quite un- 
demonize our bad affinities. They do it also, it remains 
to say, in yet another way, still closer to the purposes 
of religion. It has been a great question with many, 
whether it is possible to make out any proof of the 
goodness of God from the mere light of nature. But it 
matters little whether we can or not, if only we are 
somehow made to feel that goodness, as we most 
certainly are, prior to all questions of argument or 
opinion. . And I think it is done more effectually by the 
institution of sleep than by any thing else. Sleep is the 
perfectly passive side of our existence, and best prepares 
us to the sense of whatever is to be got by mere recep. 
tivity. In the day we protect ourselves, or at least 


OF NIGHT AND SLEEP. 27 


imagine we do. In the night we can not so much as 
think of doing it. We are switched off from all self- 
care, and our very mind runs in grooves not laid by 
us. Having spent our loan of capacity, we fall back 
into God’s arms to he refitted by him. Wesleep in his 
bosom, even as a child in the bosom of its mother. 
And this falling asleep, in one view compulsory, has 
yet, in another, a strange kind of faith in it, in which 
we consent to drop off the verge of consciousness and 
be no more ourselves. The gulf we drop into is deep 
and wild, but we go down trustfully, and there we rest. 
And this we do every day, coming out as often new 
created for life’s purposes. If we are not religious 
enough to say, “God giveth his beloved sleep,” we do, 
at least, feel ourselves refreshed by some wondrous be- 
nignity somewhere in which we have trusted. Neither 
does calling that benignity fate at all satisfy us. There 
is dear good-will in it somewhere, which, if we should 
name, is God. And we have this feeling of Un- 
known Benignity the more certainly, that we gave our- 
selves to it in wrong and conscious ill-desert, which 
itself comports not with fate, and as little with any 
feeling but that of some divine goodness. 

Besides, we are observers here as well as subjects of 
experience. We look on a good man’s sleep, and there 
is nothing so beautiful. It is Luther who has worn out 
his powers in some great fight for God; or it is Wash- 
ington half deserted by his country when bearing its 
burdens, and now, forgetting all, he has fallen back 
into God’s arms, to forget also himself. There he lies 


28 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


uncaring, and receiving back, from God’s gentle fomem 
tations, the powers that shall furnish another great to 
morrow. Standing at the open door of his chamber, 
and looking on his deep, still sleep, it is as if the eternal, 
ever faithful Goodness had him now to Himself! And 
yet more touching and closer to the tenderness of mercy 
is the very bad man’s sleep. He has drunk the cup of 
guilty pleasure dry. His tongue is weary of blasphemy. 
His deed of crime, perhaps of blood, is done, and the 
chapter of his day is ended. Having spent the power 
God gave him for good in a violation of his throne, he 
goes remorsefully to his bed, and there forgets even his 
remorse. But God does not forget him or toss him out 
of the world, but he rests encircled by the goodness of 
God, nourished by his patience, to be refitted for to- 
morrow. Probably he will do just what he has done 
before, but he shall have his opportunity of good, 
though many times forfeited; for it is a great part of 
God’s purpose in sleep to renew abused powers; else 
how many would never sleep again. Therefore, who 
of us can look on a world buried in sleep, a guilty, un- 
grateful world, broadly sunk in evil, and do it without 
some deeply affecting, overwhelming sense of the good- 
ness of God. I say not that all men have it as a 
thought or opinion, they do not; but they do have it, 
which is far better, as a feeling, that some unknown 
benignity inspheres them, call it by whatever name, 
In this feeling, too, all the most practical uses of life 
are concentered and made convergent on the bending 
of the soul to God, in ways of reverence and religion, 


IL. 
OF WANT AND WASTE. 


By want, I mean a state of short supply; by waste, 
a creative lavishment of things that are not utilized, and 
perhaps never can be. Both meet us together at every 
turn, as light and shade in the same picture, and they 
so far belong together, that I shall not feel myself at 
liberty to part them, any further than it may be neces- 
sary, to give them a sufficiently distinct consideration. 

Considering that God is a being of infinite bounty 
in his dispositions, as he is of infinite fullness in his re- 
sources, we should say beforehand that he can never 
institute a condition of short supply. Proportion, too, 
is a great and almost principal law of his realm, planet 
yearning after planet, and atom after atom, quantities 
of matter and motion after other quantities of matter 
and motion, regulated by exact ratios of distance—all 
the masses of the astronomic universe, all the atomic 
elements of universal chemistry—feeding each other, 
so to speak, in supplies that exactly meet their quanti- | 
ties of hunger. And yet, when we descend, or rather 
ascend, to man, we are met by the remarkable discovery 
that, for some reason, he is put under an ordinance of 
want, or short supply. He wants clothing for his body, 
as no one of all the beasts wants it; but it is given to 
the beasts and denied to him, except as he prepares it for 
himself. He wants a house for shelter; the squirrels 


30 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


have their trees, and the wolves their dens, but the 
face of the world offers no house made ready for him. 
He wants food and must have it; the ravens are fed, 
but the Father’s bounty prepares him neither table nor 
bread. He wants tools wherewith to help himself; but 
the iron lies under the hills, and he must dig it out; 
and then he must find how to reduce it; and then how 
to make steel of it; and then how to fashion it; and, 
finally, how to temper it, before it is ready for use. He 
has also other kinds of wants. His ear wants music, 
and his eye wants beauty, and his mind wants knowl- 
edge, and his heart wants worlds-full of friends, and his 
imaginative ideals transcend all facts; but though he 
aches and writhes in so many deep kinds of hunger, he 
only catches here and there a glimpse of what his long- 
ings struggle after. His very life, in short, appears to 
be a fixed ordinance of want. We see him set down 
upon the world, and a thousand cries break out in his 
hungry nature which there is nothing ready to supply. 
His being holds no concord visibly with his condition, 
and there is no way for him to live,'except as he con- 
quers to himself means and instruments of living, 
which his Maker has not seen fit to create. He has 
given instincts or scenting powers to the young lions, 
by which they seek their meat; but from man he has 
withholden even these. So very stringent, so deliber- 
ately meant is the state of want in which he is placed. 
It is even as if God really had not enough to make up 
our needed supply. 

And yet he makes an amount of waste in the ontfit 


OF WANT AND WASTE. 31 


of his realm that is almost infinite. What immense 
burdens of weeds, and grasses, and woods, has he put 
growing in the remote wilds of nature. With how 
many choicest and most brilliant flowers does he gar- 
nish his solitudes, and how unsparingly does he load his 
gales with perfumes, to be swept across his deserts of 
sand and his water-deserts that we call seas. And 
then these deserts of both kinds are themselves called 
wastes ; and rightly, because they occupy spaces that 
might have been covered with good land. Whole re- 
gions of the globe are waste by excess of frost ; others 
by excess of rain; and others by excess of dryness and 
heat. The seas, though waste to us, are vast pasture- 
grounds of life to the watery herds nourished in their 
prolific bosom, and they rush through its foaming acres 
in every clime, in such bulk and number as would feed 
the whole human race, and suffer no diminution. But 
they die in their depths when their day is over, and are 
strewed as waste food in the waters. Cargoes of pearls 
are hid in the sea never to be gathered. Mountain- 
weights of gold are sunk, in gravity, down to the 
earth’s center, or, at least, below where any shaft can 
reach them. God has cabinets of diamonds and other 
precious gems, that he keeps in his caverns for his own 
particular inspection, never to be seen by men. We 
are learning just now also that the forces of the world 
are much more precious in his eye than the gems; that he 
lets no force be lost or wasted ; that what was forest ages 
ago, and a ledge of coal last month, and a steam power 
yesterday, is water and diffusive gas and heat to-day; 


32 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


and thus, going through her rounds of correlation, na- 
ture keeps herself exactly good, squandering no mite 
of her original force. And therefore it is all the more 
strange, that such immense quantities of forces are 
kept in play from age to age, that never were and 
never can be utilized. Thus, if we could husband and 
apply the whole tide-swing force of the sea, it would 
suffice to keep more wheels in action than will ever 
exist in fifty such worlds as this. In the Gulf Stream 
alone, there is a greater amount of mill-force than in 
all the rivers and waterfalls of the planet. We offer it as 
a great proof of God’s beneficence that he has made such 
provision for our culinary, heating, and steam-producing 
fires, in the immense coal formations of the globe; but 
if all the forests and oil and coal measures we have on 
hand were burned up in a single day, they would not 
make as much heat, probably, as the great central fires 
underground are making, day by day and age after age, 
and will make even for a thousand millenniums. And 
all this vast expenditure, as far as we can see, is waste, 
producing nothing, save here and there an earthquake. 
Even if the fuels were all spent, as many anticipate 
they will be, we could not get help enough froin these 
hidden fires, by any method now known, to save our- 
selves from freezing. Only a mile or two of perpen- 
dicular distance there would then be between us and 
supplies of heat sufficient to answer all our purposes, 
but how to come at the fires we could not find. They 
are surplus fires, kept burning in their inaccessible cay 
erns, and shut up there, as consecrated waste, for all time 


OF WANT AND WASTE. 33 


Now these two great elements of want and waste 
will be seen to produce, and were probably meant to 
produce, impressions of a moral nature that could not 
be produced by either, or even by both acting sepa- 
rately. One of them, standing by itself and taken as an 
indication of God, would make us think of him as 
being straitened by too close a feeling of economy, able 
to give us never what we need, but only what we can 
possibly make sufficient by much study and weariness 
of the flesh; the other as being all profusion, caring 
more to pour it abroad than he does even to serve a 
possible use by it; as ready to garnish a solitude ora 
cavern, as to feed a starving invalid or child; doing 
it, in fact, when many invalids and children starve be- 
fore him. But these two characters, taken separately, 
are neither of them true. The just conception is that 
he is such a being as can fitly combine the two, as the 
wisest and most completely beneficent sovereignty may 
require; can stint us for our sakes when not for his 
own; and then, again, can be lavish in things reducible 
to no use, that we may not suppose him to have stinted 
us because he is short, either in his resources or his 
dispositions. In this manner he can put us always on 
our industry, without casting any reflection on his 
bounty. In these cross lights, therefore, of want and 
waste he is always being discovered, and our impres- 
sions of him correspond. We could not understand him 
worthily in a state of merely short supply. As little 
worthily if he could not limit his profusion, to put us 


in such ways of training as will best meet the wants 
ge 


—— 


B4 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


of our character, and best promote the good design 
he means to execute in us. 

There is a peculiar felicity and strange cogency also 
in the impression made upon us of our ill desert in evil, 
by the joint action of these two factors— an impression 
that is even a kind of first condition of our moral bene- 
fit. How many, for example, that are shivering with- 
out fuel in the cold winter months, are put thinking of 
the vast, heavy-grown trunks there may be falling down 
for age, in climes perpetually warmed by the sun, and 
rotting away on the ground. Monkeys are chattering 
and leaping in animated glee through the branches that 
would yield them a fire, how greatly needed, for their 
comfort. Others are short of food or dying for hunger, 
who remember the squirrels that are sporting with 
nuts, or the panthers and bears glutting themselves 
with food, for want of which they starve. We suffer 
no want the supply of which is not somewhere perish- 


‘ ing as waste. The sea is full of food, the solitudes of 


the world are clothed in beauty and vocal with musie, 
all splendor and beauty and profusion fill the earth; 
still the riches are sooner wasted than allowed to come 
to us. And so we are compelled to say—who does not 
say it?— manifestly God is bountiful, and yet he 
pinches me. I find it in my nature to love and desire 
profusion, this is the paradise of my fancy, and almost 
the practical need of my want, and yet, as if he had 
some thought against me, God puts me down here low, 
in short supply. What does it signify? Must I draw 
some lesson hence against myself?” 


OF WANT AND WASTE. 35 


Pursuing thoughts like these, it will be difficult to 
avoid the impression of some moral defect or spiritual! 
alienation that requires a stringently close discipline 
A sacrament of conviction occupies the whole scheme of 
life. Whether we speculate or not upon the contrast 
between our wants and the exuberant waste of Provi- 
dence, we are set in a different mental attitude, and kept 
under the dominion of impressions above all salutary 
to'us. We see the profusion round us, and, if we do 
not reason from it, we feel what must somehow be im- 
plied in it. A sense of estrangement breaks in, as it 
were, through our eyes. We accuse our poverty, and 
that in turn accuses us. The outward profusion makes 
us feel our spiritual wants, and the more we feel our 
spiritual wants, the more closely are we brought to the 
prodigal’s resolve, when he says, “ I will arise and go to 
my father.” Notice, also, how these two feelings of 
want and waste concur in the prodigal’s story. ‘“ He 
began to be in want,” and he said, “ My father has 
bread enough and to spare” —more than enough, bread 
that is even waste; and between these two points or 
poles it is that his bad conviction works. And so it is 
with us all; we commonly get our sense of wrong, as a 
moral state of alienation, more or less distinctly trom 
the conjoined feeling of our own close poverty and 
God’s infinite bounty. Were we set down here in 
short supply, and every thing about us made to bear 
the same close, stinted look—the sun shining econom- 
ically, the rains only dewing the ground, the nights 
revealing only a star or two, the forest lands growing 


86 MORAL USES OF DARK TIINGS. 


only sprigs and copse, and the sea producing only a 
few small fish, afraid both of man and of each other—the 
niggard aspect of such a state would rather put us on 
justifying ourselves, and would be as far as possible 
from begetting any tenderness of conviction toward 
God. 

But there are uses both of want and waste that 
depend more especially on their separate action, and 
the impressions they produce in their own particular 
spheres. We make our survey next of these. 


1. Of such as belong to Want, or the state of Short 
Supply.—And here we encounter at once, the fact that 
we are put on creating something, at the very outset of 
our life. We must do it, or die; which is the same as 
to say that we must consent so far to be creative, like 
our Creator himself. He stopped short in his own 
work, leaving our supplies unfinished, and requiring us 
to go on and finish them ourselves—to plant, and culti- 
vate, and build, and spin, till the furniture of our comfort 
is complete. God could have made harvests as easily 
as seeds, and bread ready-baked as easily as harvests, 
and houses as easily as timber, or bricks as clay; or 
cloth as easily as wool, and coats as cloth; but he pre- 
ferred to call us into creation with him, as if he would 
put meaning enough into our existence, to give it dig- 
nity somewhat like his own. For what dignity is there 
in the fact, as we look abroad on the scenery of the 
world, that all which differs the landscape in beauty 
from mere wild forest, the meadows, and rich fields, 


OF WANT AND WASTE. 37 


and gardens, and flocks, and roads, and bridges, and 
churches, and monuments, and towns, and cities, is not 
God’s particular work, but man’s. God set him to 
the task, and he has done it, forming what is grander 
than the thinge themselves, a creative habit like his 
Maker’s. 

And there is the greater use and dignity in this, that 
every thing moral, even up to the joy of moral perfec- 
tion, is, and is meant to be, creative. True moral joy 
is not infused into souls, but comes up out of hidden 
wells in their own positive goodness. Their beatific 
state is nothing but the consummation of a creative 
force working in the springs of their character. It isa 
state of power, and its joy is the birth of power. Pas- 
sively received, it could not be. It is the mounting up 
of a soul, in the faith of God’s nearness to it, into God’s 
principles, aims, and emotions. Were it a state of 
mere passive receptivity, there would be no growth or 
development in it. A pampered weakness and glori- 
fied idleness would be the whole account of it. 

Hence, the necessity of some such arrangement as 
would gird us to creative action, in a way of getting 
our supplies. Were there a perfect harmony and equi- 
librium between man’s nature and the world —every 
want met by supply, every desire of his heart gratified 
as it rises—it were only a fit completion of the plan to 
case him in a shell and glue him to some rock, where 
the floods of bounty sweeping by shall bring him his 
nutriment. No, he could not be man as belonging to 
the testacea. Conflict only and battle can effectively 


38 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


muster his powers. He does not sufficiently exist if he 
is not made to fight for his existence. If he is not made 
creative, then he is but half created. Real life must 
have some heroic force in it, else it only breathes, but 
does not live. Sons of ease and luxury, who are never 
to have a wish ungratified, or the movement of a finger 
required, are put down as born in the family register, 
but they are only half-born as yet, and are not likely to 
be more, till they are put to the strain by wants and im- 
pediments, which they could better afford to buy than to 
have been without them. Sometimes a prodigious vol- 
unteer ambition may fulfill, in part, the same uses; but 
we commonly expect to see the effectives and great 
spirits and geniuses of the world struggling up out of 
obscurity and want and heavy throes of soul-birth, and 
taking their places as conquerors. They are men of 
victory, not of fortune. And therefore doubtless it was 
that, to give man a start, God threw him out of his 
equilibrium at the beginning, incorporating in him 
wants, the supply of which he is to get, only as he 
wrings it from his crude possibilities by strenuous ex- 
ertion. Possibilities, not supplies, are given him, and 
it rests with him to convert his possibilities into sup- 
plies. Want is to be the dry-nurse of his powers, 
teaching him to think, contrive, resolve, and, putting 
means to their ends, create for himself. Hunger, mean- 
time, gnaws at him, the heat scorches him, the rains 
drench him, the snows drive into his bosom, all the 
pitiless elements fall to work at him, and he takes up 
his fight to keep them at bay. At one point of victory 


OF WANT AND WASTE. 39 


he gets courage for another. Every success sharpens 
his invention, sets him to a firmer tension of resclve, 
and lifts him to a manlier confidence, and the first 
grand problem in his training, the development of his 
creative force, is effectually resolved. He is no more 
a mere being, but he is a practical being, whose inter- 
nal possibilities are become more wonderfully full, than 
the crude and meager possibilities given him for the 
outward furniture of his life. 

Consider, next, the moral significance of our state of 
short supply in the fact that so healthful and regular 
an impulse is imparted by it to habits of industry. In- 
dustry is the natural teacher and guardian of virtue, 
and the world is contrived to be its proper schooling- 
place. It proposes that we may obtain a well-endowed 
future here, just as holy obedience will do it hereafter— 
only in a lower plane of endeavor. Its industries are to be 
systematic, sober,and steady. Its cares are to be thought- 
ful. It will have us get on by constancy and the frugal 
saving of our gains; just as every highest saint will 
get his victories by the tender economy that saves his 
little advances. It holds the mind to a provident fore- 
seeing habit, and concentrates the otherwise vagrant 
expectations and visionary dreams that pay their court 
to accident or fortune. Its pleasures are such as flow 
from the sight of its rewards and the enjoyment of its 
comforts. It consents withal to let go self-indulgence, 
and bear the toils of patience. It is, in fact, a kind of 
natural piety ; coming to the great powers of nature— 
the seasons, the soil, the mechanical and chemical lawa 


40 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


of the world—and there making application, as a Chris. 
tian applies in prayer to his God, suing thence by labor 
the supplies and benefits it wants. It wrestles with 
nature as Jacob wrestled with the angel. It prays with 
Agur: “Feed me with food convenient forme.” Its very 
toil is liturgical, without even a chance of formality. By 
how thin a vail is it separated thus from God; let it 
only bring its suit one degree closer, piercing the vail, 
and it becomes even holy piety itself. So closely to 
his bosom does God manage to bring us, under the 
teaching and discipline of a short supply. Not to ad- 
mire the sublime teaching of want, viewed in this con- 
nection, will be difficult for any reflective person. 
Possibly here and there a man might go into some kind 
of action, bodily and mental, from a state of complete 
gratification or full supply. He might bound over the 
fields like the deer, in mere redundancy of life ; he might 
pile up edifices just to see how they would look, having 
no other use forthem ; and if then, having grazed to the 
full in what is to him the great man-pasture, called the 
world —every sense delighted, every appetite cloyed— 
he shall betake himself to his bowers, and there, as the 
soft breezes fan his temples, let his busy fancy rove, 
creating images at random, and swimming in the glories 
of his poetic dreams; this would be activity, but ac- 
tivity, alas! without an object—a busy caprice, a stren- 
uous idleness. Manifestly, such kind of activity would 
be a wretched preparation for any thing moral or holy. 
Set him under want, gird him to labor, see him wipe the 
sweat from his brow as he toils to get his bread, and 


OF WANT AND WASTE. 41 


we find him in how good a school, learning how brave 
a lesson—a lesson, too, that he wants much more than 
he does bread. Call it the curse: I will not stop to 
argue the question whether that curse was a miracle 
of blight added after man’s defection, or a possibility 
inserted by anticipation, and developed by the terrible 
reactions of his sin itself; enough to know that, like all 
God’s curses, it is a curse for benefit, which if we do 
not like it, will none the less faithfully stay by us. And 
who is there, what living man, that has any the least 
capacity of reflection, who has not discovered that good 
necessities are the grandest wealth of existence? To be 
cornered and pressed and edged on practically into the 
best ways and noblest endeavors, turned away from 
evil and made strong in good, corrected, lifted, amplified, 
and held fast in the way to be glorified—what man will 
not thank God for such good necessities more devoutly 
than for life itself? 

It is also another very amaneud use of want that 
it prepares a basis for what is called the mewm and 
twwm of property; which is, in fact, a kind of first 
condition as regards the moral training of our life. 
Here it is that we learn what it is to be just and what to 
be unjust. Here it is that fraud and violence and 
falsity stir us to such faithful rigor and decisiveness in 
our moral condemnations. Mere principles would not 
signify much to us; they would even seem to be a great 
way off, if they did not touch us in something which 
vividly concerns us. We take part here for truth and 
justice and right and faith and exact honor, because 


42 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


there is property at stake, and who is indifferent to 
property? Our courts, too, and public records, and all 
our immense toil in the perfecting of the civil state as 
a defender of society, are but a part of the grand moral 
struggle that centers in the holding and use and trans- 
mission of property. Every principle we assert is moral ; 
every right we vindicate is based in moral ideas. 

But it is not perceived by all that God’s institute of 
want is at the bottom of property, and so of all the 
moral discipline it brings with it. If we had every 
comfort and gratification ready for use; if our food 
were bending to us from the trees ; if gold and diamonds 
were a full half the common dirt and gravel ; if temples, 
railroads, and cities full of merchandise, were bursting 
up everywhere out of the ground of their own accord; — 
there would, in such a case, be no chance of the exist- 
ence of property. What we call property is created 
by the incorporation of: labor, which gets a right, of 
course, to have what it has created, or by some kind 
of improvement modified. 

But there can be no labor where there is no want. 
Who will put himself on toil to make up a supply that 
is made up already? And what care have we to say, 
this is mine, when we are more likely to throw it away 
than we are to have it taken from us? The whole 
fabric of society, as a moral affair, falls to pieces and is 
lost, as far as the rights of property and trade and titles 
and justice are concerned. We are only put to pasture 
in the world, with a certainty of being satisfied and sur 
feited, and cloyed by our abundanae. 


OF WANT AND WASTE. 43 


We shall also discover that many other of the prin- 
cipal preparations for our moral training are discon- 
tinued, in like manner, by the simple removing of want. 
The family, for example, is bound together chiefly by 
this tie. Husband and wife are knit by this tie, more 
stringent and often more enduring than love. Children 
want every thing, coming into life, as it were, in a type 
of universal want. Here, too, is the meaning of that 
intensely moral word—Aome. If there were a home 
everywhere, then there were no home. If there were 
supplies everywhere, then the common labors and rough 
hardships which bind families together—the property, 
the expected harvests, the hoped-for income—all the 
sweet bonds of care and common enjoyment are super- 
seded. Let the children go into the fields as the young 
animals do, and they shall findenough. All the tender 
relations of care, and love, and government, in this 
best school of virtue are gone, and society has become 
a herd. 

Again, it will be seen that the manifold distinctions 
and relations of mutual dependence, which constitute 
a basis. for reciprocal duties and charities, are mostly 
due to the ordinance of short supply. For if the same 
unbounded gifts were poured out to us all, and every 
man could freely take his full supply, there would be- 
no acquisition, and by consequence no property; all 
distinctions but such as are immediately personal would 
be unknown, and society would so far be dissolved, 
As it is now, everybody wants almost everybody. 
Labor seeks capital, and capital seeks labor. The poor 


44 MORAL USES OF DARK ‘TILINGS. 


look after employment, the rich look after service, 
The weak want friends and protectors, the strong 
want clients and dependents. Leaders must have 
followers, else they can not lead; followers must 
have leaders, else they must hew out their way 
for themselves. And then it is to be seen, through 
all these diversified relations of dependency, what 
is in every man’s heart and principle, and what kind 
of passion will rule his conduct. Pride, arrogance, 
ambition, oppression, cruelty, avarice, envy, discon- 
tent, ingratitude, treachery—every man’s evil, what- 
soever it be—vwill be charactered as in definite 
sun-picture, and’ held up before him; and whatever 
is loathsome, disgusting, revolting in wrong, will 
be discovered to society, in and by society. And s0, 
on the other hand, provision is made through society, 
set off by want in so many relations of dependence, 
for the discovery of whatever is beautiful in so many 
kinds of virtue—protection, favor, encouragement, ex- 
ample, patience toward the weak, forbearance toward 
weak enemies; answered by fidelity, truth, unstinted 
respect, unenvying homage to position. The immense 
power given to moral ideas by this light and shade 
of social distinctions and degrees can hardly be over- 
estimated, 

In this category, too, of social distinctions prepared 
by want, it is that provision is made, as it were of set 
purpose, for charity. It was never God’s intention, in 
our state of short supply, that any should suffer lack. 
Had there been no place left among men for sacred 


OF WANT AND WASTE. 46 


charity, that would itself be the sorest lack of all. Who 
is more truly blessed than he that, being full, loves to 
impart his fullness to such as are in want? And when 
the suffering invalid, or child of sorrow, finds a large, 
free heart of brotherhood open to his want, is he not as 
truly blessed, though in a humbler key? This dear, 
divine charity, we can easily see, would have no place in 
the world, if there were no want in it. God makes 
room for it by his ordinance of want, giving it in charge 
thereby, to all that conquer a state of abundance, to 
make up what necessities are unsupplied ; doing them 
great respect in leaving so many wants to be made up 
by them; which, if they do, he takes them, as it were, 
into honorable, high partnership with himself, saying, 
“Ye did it unto me.” 

But there isa more géneral and absolute kind of 
benefit in our state of want that remains to be named 
last of all, namely, the benefit of limitation itself. It 
is the sin of all sin that it refuses limitation—will not 
accept the limitations even of law. And then, since no 
limitation of law can be carried by mere force, what 
shall God do, with so great hope of benefit, as to put us 
under limitations, closely related, that can be so carried 
with propriety? Besides, if he had given us full scope 
in our passions and pleasures, as he must in a state of 
boundless supply, it is impossible to guess, into what 
depths of license and wid debauchery we should have 
been plunged. Appetites unrestricted, self-government 
broken, no labor, boundless gratification poured into 
the bosom of idleness, passions chastened by no sober 


46 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


necessities—a single thought suffices to show us, that 
want itself is now the greatest want. Let this come 
and bea cage of iron about us, since we can not be kept 
in heaven’s order without a cage. If the bars press 
closely upon us and we writhe, much writhing will do 
us good, especially if our writhing takes the form of 
work and self-regulative economy; for the industry 
we practice is really a sort of obedience that we pay to 
limitation; and then, as the limitation accepted is 
nearest in resemblance to the restrictions of law, the 
obedience practiced is next thing, in a sense, to that 
holy obedience which is typified in it. Or, if our 
state of want galls our pride and sometimes worries it 
quite down, if it checks our presumption, tames our 
passion, makes us little and poor and weak, what are 
we doing but trying to make a god of this world, and 
what is more necessary or fit, than to starve our god 
and bring leanness into his worshipers? And it is 
none the worse if our state of want is more than disre- 
garded in this manner—inflamed, exasperated, and 
made conscious. “It is a miserable state of mind,” says 
Lord Bacon, “and yet it is commonly the case of kings, 
to have few things to desire and many things to fear.” 
We should all be so far kings, if our supply were full; 
and, having few things to desire, we should be insipid 
and dry as most kings probably are to themselves. 
Great wants, a consciousness of want gaping wide as the 
sea, is but the yearning of a nature felt to be as great, 
and crying after God, who alone can be the possible 
complement of its desires; which want itself is even a 


OF WANT AND WASTE. 47 


kind of luxury, and poor injeed are they that have it 
not. It still remains to speak more briefly— 


2. Of the uses of Waste—When we see that 
God pours out of his abundance, in creative lavish- 
ments that never can be turned to any practical use 
by us, we are taken quite away from the conceit that 
something worthy of him is to be found, only when we 
discover in his works adaptations to our physical want 
or conyenience. It has been a great study of science 
for many years past to discover such points of adapta- 
tion, and so great progress has been made that many 
are ready to assume the fact of nature’s universal adapt- 
ation to our human uses in the bodily conditions. 
Doubtless nature is adapted somehow to our uses, but 
not, of course, to our physical uses. Some things will 
be the better adapted to our mental and moral uses, 
that they are not adapted to our physical, and because 
they are not. ‘Every thing created must be somehow the 
expression of God, and all that is in God is adapted cer- 
tainly to our best uses in thought and duty and charac- 
ter. But if we could reduce both him and his work to 
a mere contriving of physical and mechanical adapta- 
tions for our comfort, we should make him out a scheme 
of morality in about the lowest figure of utility that 
ever was or can be imagined. And to save us appar- 
ently from so great folly and falsity, he has made a 
very large part of his creation for waste, as far as any 
mere physical uses are concerned—all the polar regions 


48 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


all the inaccessible summits of the mountains, all the 
deserts, all the immense depths of the seas, and what is 
more, and some thousands of miles deeper, all the tre 
mendous steam-gulfs and fire-seas boiling at the world’s 
core—indeed, there is nothing in God’s whole-creation 
adapted to our physical use, and nothing that ever can 
be, save in the globe’s mere bark or peel. In that su- 
perficial and very thin covering, too, a very great part 
shows no trace of adaptation, and is, besides, interlarded 
with agues and miasmas, and all sorts of mineral and 
vegetable poisons. So carefully has God excluded the 
possibility of a mere Bridgewater treatise religion—he 
will not have it assumed that the chief end of God is 
adaptation to man. He gives us all the productive 
means we want, and makes the world correspond with 
us up to just that point where it had best correspond 
with himself, representing not so much his contrivance 
as the spontaneous out-pouring of his illimitable quan- 
tities and exhaustless forces of creatorship. For it was 
a matter of as great consequence to usto see his exuber- 
ance as his contrivance, and his creation was to be the 
more grandly adapted to us, that it transcended so far 
all petty possibilities of physical use, and revealed, on 
sv vast a scale, the waste he could afford to spread 
about him, as the type of his own divine splendor and 
profusion. 

We look abroad thus over the vast unutilized quan- 
tities of his realm, and perceive at once that he is 
measuring his work not by us, but by himself rather; 
and it comes into mind: “the Lord hath made all 

Z 


OF WANT aND WASTE. 49 


things for himself” We behold the realms of air and 
earth and sea peopled with joyous life; as ifto say that 
he has pleasure in adaptations made for other creatures 
as truly as for man—insects and mere animated atoms 
—able without exhaustion to set their instincts, and 
-make up their instrumentations, in the nicest forms of 
fitness; creatures that will live and die unvalued by us, 
and, therefore, have no value save to him. His care of 
them is perfect, though it be the care of waste, and re- 
veals, in just that fact, his really divine capacity. And 
if it be something to us that the air is adapted to our 
breathing and blood, the earth to our feet, the water to 
our thirst, far more does it signify that there are so 
many myriads of creatures, folded by God’s care, who 
exist only for his private eye—breathing, leaping, flying, 
and filling his realm with their gambols, and yet living 
only as before him. 

By this same exuberance of care expended on the 
wild races of life it was that the sacred poet’s mind was 
s0 deeply impressed, when he sang his Bridgewater 
treatise in this high strain, reciting God’s care of the 
beasts—“ planting the cedars of Lebanon where the 
birds make their nests; as for the stork, the fir-trees are 
her house ; the high hills are a refuge for the wild goats, 
and the rocks for the conies; the young lions roar 
after their prey, and seek their meat from God. O 
Lord, how manifold are thy works; in wisdom hast 
thon made them all; the earth is full of thy riches. So 
is this great and wide sea wherein are things creeping 


innumerable, both small and great beasts. These wait 
8 


ale 


50 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


all upon thee, and thou givest them their meat in due 
season.” Wherefore his conclusion is—what other 
could he think of?—“ The glory of the Lord shall en- 
dure forever ; the Lord shall rejoice in his works.” For 
beholding God thus, in works of multitudinous life 
which are waste to us, having no relation to our physi- 
cal uses, they have even the sublimer use that they rep- 
resent the fertile fatherhood of God; and yet another 
use, in teaching us not to assume that we are measures 
of the world’s contents, not to put ourselves to any airs 
of loftiness, as if the world were made for our con- 
venience. It is made for us mainly in the sense 
that, being waste for us, it is expression for God. We 
are tenants here of a large house, emmets, I may say, in 
a vast cathedral, which if it do not yield us all the sup- 
plies we want, yet bears the signatures of loftier, holier 
uses that exceed our petty measure and proportion. 
And yet the temple, vast as it is, is not too vast for our 
feeling, and full as it is of things existing only for God, 
it is even the more appropriate and better adapted to us, 
because they represent his glory. 

I will only add, in conclusion, what appears to be 
quite evident, and was doubtless meant to be, in this mat- 
ter of waste, that use or utility is not any certain law of 
morality or religious conduct. That box of ointment 
that was going to be spent for nothing—how plausible 
was the appeal to use, recounting the pennies it would 
have sold for, and the nice things it would have bought 
for the poor! Only it was Judas, and not Christ, that 
was forward in the argument. Christ was willing to 


OF WANT AND WASTE. 51 


have it all spent as a tribute of pious luxury on his own 
head, and even praised the woman besides, as he almost 
never praised any one of his disciples. ‘“ To what pur- 
pose is this waste?” For the very same purpose, we are to 
answer, that some things are best which do not meet a 
bodily want, and because they do not; best because 
they are waste; even as nineteen-twentieths of God’s 
creation itself is waste. Much he does for our comfort 
and happiness ; a great deal more to raise an opinion of 
his resources, and the glorious wealth of his fatherhood. 
To beget or express a sentiment is a matter of as great 
consequence to him as to serve a convenience. He nei- 
ther holds nor would teach, that charity goes by a law 
of economy, or that virtue tallies with utility. He 
breaks away, himself, from all utilitarian standards, and 
pours himself out in his own measures. So there is to 
be a certain lavishment and waste in what we call our 
piety. We are to have our secret testimonies, offer our 
hidden sacrifices, do our alms, which only God shall 
know ; delight to spend, for love’s sake, more than we 
need, pour out bounties that never can be utilized, save 
by some feeling or faith enriched. Ornament, perfume, 
color, proportion, expense, majesty, any kind of waste 
that is not ambitious, and only expresses the heart, as the 
woman’s ointment expresses hers, stands well in the terms 
of duty. God is no philanthropist, and does not train 
us to be, save in that high sense that he can sometimes 
allow even our human want to be stringent, when he lav- 
ishes bounty on the sea or sprinkles the dust with gold, 


Ii. 


OF BAD GOVERNMENT. 


Ir is one of the complaints of Job, that “the earth is 
given into the hand of the wicked ;” which, if it is less 
generally true now than it was in his day, still contin- 
ues to be a standing complaint of the world. The de- 
plorable fact, the moan of history, as we all know, is 
bad men in power, and still bad men in power. We 
follow down the train of nations and peoples, and dis- 
tinguish everywhere the groanings of this sorrow. The 
flies that buzz and flutter in the tyrant spider’s web are. 
an image too faithfully true of our miserably weak hu- 
manity, wriggling, age upon age, in the toils of abused 
power. What unspeakable sufferings crowd the dismal 
story! Order isthe pretext for all worst and most cruel 
disorder. Ideas of right and liberty make their ap- 
pearance late, and then as crimes. Industry is tram- 
pled, property and titles violated, families broken by 
exile, weakness stripped of shelter, and crime of redress. 
Virtue itself is crushed and duty persecuted. Woes of 
taxation, woes of plunder and lust, under cover of pub- 
lic authority ; woes of bleeding for conquest, and bleed- 
ing under conquest—whole nations and peoples dragged 
into the march to die, leaving other nations depopulated 
and bare, where their desolating march has swept— 
there is no end, in short, to the distractions, poverties, 
starvations, bereayements, and bitter pangs of wrong, 


OF BAD GOVERNMENT. 53 


which are being laid, in all ages, on the world, by the 
cruelties of wickedness in power. When we say these 
things, crowding our large impeachment into a few 
short sentences, we seem to be rather making a decla- 
mation than a sober statement of it; but if we could 
summon up the facts and scenes, and set them forth 
specifically in fall historic array, they would take an 
air of verity so dreadful, as to make us even shudder at 
the possible endurance of the world. 

Why then is it, and how, that power is generally 
found in the hands of wicked men? It is not always 
80; as we see when a Cyrus, a Cimon, a Regulus, an 
Alfred, a Washington, or a Lincoln holds the reins of 
empire. Sometimes a real usurper like Cromwell 
seizes the condition of power, to wield it only for the 
vindication of right and liberty. And when just men, 
like these, are allowed to show the immense beneficence 
of power, in the blessings conferred on their times, and 
the up-looking comfort and strength produced, in a few 
short years, by their righteous administration, we only 
wonder the more that such examples could not be more 
frequent ; asking again, less patiently than before, Why 
is it that so many bad men are allowed to stalk over 
the world in baleful prerogative, crushing out again 
and again, one after another, the rights of merit, and the 
promises and possibilities of public civilization ? 

Must we, therefore, doubt that God is good? or that 
he organizes law and public rule for the protection of 
right, and the advancement of all best er ds in society? 
Perhaps it may be true, as we often hear, that bad em- 


64 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


pire is better than no empire at all; and Providence, 
it may be thought, is justified by the preponderant 
benefits of law, however wickedly administered, as com- 
pared with the unspeakable miseries of general anarchy. 
But why should it be necessary to make out our vindi- 
eations of Providence in this low scale of computation ? 
If authority and empire are so much wanted, that the 
benefits a little predominate even when wickedly admin- 
istered, how much better and more invaluable are they, 
when they are held by just men faithfully serving their 
times. And just so much worthier is it of Providence 
—never sufficiently honored save when it provides the 
best—to have good men always in power. And we 
seem to have an almost imperative reason why it should 
be so, in the fact that we are even put in moral obliga- 
tion to “the powers that be,” on the express ground, 
that they are “ the ordinance” of God himself. All 
the more strange is it, therefore, that bad powers are 
declared to rule thus in God’s right, and that we are 
further required, on holy principle, to obey them. So 
at least we reason—why not well ? 

And yet not well, as we shall abundantly see, when 
we look the problem through more carefully, and bring 
out the points of a true and sufficient solution. They 
are such as these :— 

1. Bad men are never in power because they are 
preferred and selected by Providence; but they are set 
in power by the laws of inheritance, or they win their 
election to power by wicked and corrupt arts, or they 
seize on the condition of power by unscrupulous acts of 


OF BAD GOVERNMENT. 55 


asurpation. Such laws of inheritance too are created, 
aot immediately by God, but by human society rather, 
and are only providential in the sense that God allows 
society, in a merely permissive way, to establish its own 
customs and precedents; preferring, as a matter of 
benefit to society, to let it have a qualified agency in 
its own government, instead of ruling it by absolute 
dictation himself. Besides, it is by no requisition of 
Providence, that the ruler promoted by inheritance is 
a bad man. He could be a true, just man, such as God 
is ever prompting and helping him to be. Exactly the 
same thing is to be said when a bad man mounts into 
power, as a trust conferred by election. Society made 
the laws of election; society made the choice. Provi- 
dence did not prefer his election, but only preferred to 
have the people elect for themselves, and do it wisely ; 
only meaning to have them get instruction enough, 
when they do it unwisely, to rectify their judgments 
and give them a conviction, more profoundly impressed, 
of the necessary requisites of justice and character. 
Not even a usurper need be a bad man, or make any 
bad use of power. When his act of usurpation is insti- 
gated only by the public woes of his time, which woes 
ery to God for redress, he fulfills a call of duty, and is, 
in fact, the more sublimely right, that he dares to seize 
a power which feebler souls would not. Had Wash- 
ington failed, history might question whether he was 
not a usurper, as it is quite commonly agreed that Crom- 
well, God’s true champion, was. But the bad usurper, 
the Nimrod of his time, is not put in his place by God 


56 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 


and is not wanted there; only God cunsents, for the 
peace of society, that powers usurped by wrong shall be 
taken as powers de facto and obeyed, till they are bro- 
ken by their own excesses, or some counter-revolution 
ie organized with a rational chance of success. It is not, 
therefore, true that God puts any bad man in power, 
or, in any proper or true sense, prefers to have him in 
power. His plan is simply to let society and man come 
into this field, and learn sufficient wisdom in it to 
to prefer and elevate only the just. 

2. It will perhaps be imagined, that if God does not 
set the bad in power himself, he could, at least, prevent 
their coming into power, and save the world in that 
manner from all the public miseries inventoried in his- 
tory. In a certain coarse physical sense, he could ; that 
is, managing the world by omnipotent force, he has 
force enough to do it. But he does not govern the 
world by force. He has consented to govern it through 
its liberty; that is, by counsel, influence, secret motivi- 
ties and providential corrections, just far enough off, or 
far enough back, to allow no finger’s weight of force on 
the prerogatives of liberty. In this way God has con- 
sented because it was best, to have men generate and 
man their own institutions. In this finer, higher sense, 
therefore, it is no irreverence to God to say that he 
could not prevent the obtaining of power by wicked 
men; for we only mean that, for good and sufficient 
reasons, he has consented not to interfere by force in 
holding them back, and that, as will be seen at once, 
puts his omnipotence out of the question. 


OF BAD GOVERNMENT. 57 


Besides, there is a great deal more implied in pre- 
venting their attainment of power than may at first be 
apparent. No mere holding down or repression of 
their lustful energies will be sufficient, save as there is 
an immense uplifting of society also into character, and 
law, and courage for the right. No bad man seizes the 
condition of power without help. And here, in fact, is 
the principal difficulty ; that society itself is so low and 
weak and wicked, as to offer itself as a prey to 
any most crafty, unscrupulous leader. And there is, in 
fact, no way of preventing his attainment of power, 
save as he is hemmed about by stouter souls in the 
panoply of stouter principles. Where there is a mean, 
dejected, fawning spirit, the bad man need not be much 
of a hero in getting power; he will, in fact, be lifted 
into it. 

It takes very little force to mount above weakness, 
ignorance, and low servility; it would even require a 
very considerable power of self-control not to usurp, by 
their instigation, some right of precedence. What 
wonder, in fact, is it that men have been deified and 
set up as idols of religious worship, where souls are only 
abjects to themselves; where the low-born feeling is 
dazed by airs of pride and circumstance, and the feeble 
admirations and base sycophancies of sin have taken 
away, not only the manliness, but the proper energy of 
selfishness? Thus comes also caste, a classification of 
orders that is set on a footing even of religious con- 
viction; not that the upper rank has put down the 


lower, any more than the lower has lifted and sanctified 
3° 


68 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


the upper. Had the lower continued to be men, the 
upper could never have become gods). They made a 
bid for degradation themselves, and took it by divine 
right, because it was in them already. Much the same 
is true of fashion. Some tyrant, or some favorite of 
some vicious court, or it may be only a court exquisite, 
or court harlot, has been able, by a certain splendid auda- 
city, to set the mode; and then how tamely, nay, how 
eagerly, submits the world! running to put on its 
badges of humiliation, ashamed to be without them, 
and even fearing not to be as abject as the law of ab- 
jectness requires. Terrible power this tyrant of the 
mode! Rather say, sad, awful weakness, this subser- 
viency, nay, pride of subserviency, in the race. And 
how many things does it include—opinions, associations, 
duties, and even the choice of a religion itself! How 
few can dare to be singular even in these. It requires, 
in fact, less nerve to fight a battle than to resist a fashion. 

We help bad men into power in other ways less feeble 
and as much more greedy. The usurper makes no 
stride by himself, but he has his retainers and conspir- 
ators about him waiting for the spoil. Thus, if he is 
to be elected to power, he will have his file-leaders 
and voters and vote-buyers about him, even as the 
eagles are gathered to their prey. Or, perhaps, they 
will have banded themselves together, and set him up 
to be promoted by their vote, not for his sake but their 
own ; in the name of precedence making him their tool. 
And the greediest, wildest despotism in the world is 
the power that is wielded asa tool. A political party 


OF BAD GUVERNMENT. 59 


will often be more sure of its ascendency, as it is 
more desperate in character—held together as a many- 
headed tyranny, for whole generations, by the cohesive- 
ness of wrong, and a liberty that is free to sell the 
muniments of order and right. Conquerors do not 
harness the people to their chariot unhelped; but the 
people themselves want, some of them, a hero, and 
some of them a chance to be heard of themselves, and 
a great many more to see the brave sight of an army; 
so they march to the standard with cheers—only drag- 
ging after them, by compulsion, such as will not go for 
the spoil or the glory. Slavery might seem to be mere 
force, instigated and helped by nothing but the lust of 
gain. And yet this ownership of men was only bought 
of another ownership that was gotten by capture, and 
that capture again was bid for by the weakness of the 
captives, waiting, as it were, to be seized. And so poor 
Africa groans under the heel of slavery, simply because 
Africa herself is breeding and hunting her children, to 
endow this awful tyrant power of slavery, the worst and 
most wicked, in some respects, the world has ever seen. 

Glancing about thus,in every direction we discover 
some kind of bad power mounting into ascendency. 
What men can, they seize—usurpation is the devil, so 
to speak, of all high possibility. But, generally, there 
is a vast complex connivance with them in society 
itself. They are instigated, set on, thrust forward, 
lifted up, by the weakness, the foolish subserviency, the 
mean servility, the greediness, and rampant passion of 
the world. So that, if we require it of God to prevent 


60 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 


the attainment of power by bad men, he ean do it only 
by preventing society at large from being just what it 
is—exactly what he has been doing, in all ages, from 
the first day until now ; only it is not yet done, and, in 
fact, can be done, only by the slowest and tardiest re- 
generation possible. 

3. It will sometimes occur to us that if God may not 
prevent the raising of bad men to conditions of power, 
he might well enough restrain them in their abuses of 
power ; hedging them about by his providence, humbling 
them by his providential judgments, inventing checks 
and counter-checks, making the love of popularity re- 
strain the greediness of plunder, setting a balance 
between sensuality and ambition, holding back from 
manifold wrongs by the dread of wide-spread conspira- 
cies, making the temptation of a name an argument for 
great public beneficence, wielding the dread of other 
powers,as a motive for the highest possible advance- 
ment of wealth and character and art in the people of 
the tyrant power to be maintained. Even masters 
might be set to the cultivation of all best powers, 
whether of body or mind, in their slaves, by the con- 
sideration of higher honor and higher profit to them- 
selves, in the use of their faculties. All such counter- 
balancings and restrainings of motive by opposing 
motive, are, in fact, employed to a certain extent, and 
are always at work under providence; but they only 
moderate, never effectually stop the rage of bad power. 
To a certain extent, we come into this field ourselves, 
having it as one of our own great points of wisdom ip 


OF BAD GOVERNMENT. 61 


the adjustment of political institutions, to make up 
what we call “a system of checks and balances ;” and 
some of our most theoretic statesmen appear to imagine 
that it can be done, with such perfect nicety of per- 
ception, as to make every thing keep traverse, no matter 
how bad the magistrates or the people. This most 
preposterous conceit, which undertakes to make bad 
society good enough for good government, has never 
been attempted by the supreme government of the 
world. And if possibly God could execute such a feat 
of skill, he would certainly deem the trick more mis- 
chievous than ingenious. What could be a greater 
subversion of moral distinctions, than to have bad men 
as beneficent, as much beloved, as profoundly honored, 
as the good and the just? If wicked sovereigns, having 
no regard in principle for righteousness, would yet, for 
policy’s sake, be always faithful to the right; if they 
would sanctify justice, not because it is just, but because 
justice is salutary; if they would assert the right of 
the poor, because the poor may yet be rich, though 
despising now their brotherhood; if, for any and all 
such false motives, they would rightly moderate the 
uses of power, and win it thus for their distinction in 
history, that they did well and grandly served their 
people, when caring for no principle, and living in no 
terms of moral order, they would be the very greatest 
curse to society that society has ever seen—greater, 
happily, than ever has been or ever will be seen. 
Wrong in the attitudes and honors of right! profligacy 
wholesome! pride as good as principle! passion trust- 


62 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


worthy! selfishness beneficent! Such kinds of character, 
if we had them, would very nearly overset the distinctions 
of virtue, and would be, in fact, the greatest conceivable 
calamity to the race. We are brought on thus:— 

4. To that which appears to be the grand all-deter- 
mining reason of Providence in the elevation of bad men 
to conditions of power; namely, the very important, quite 
indispensable uses they may serve, by their wrongs in that 
condition, as related to the better and more effective 
development of moral ideas. It is simply letting society 
and man be what they are, to show what they are. For, 
in raising a world out of evil, a very considerable and first 
problem is, to reveal it to itself, or set it in the best 
conditions to make such a revelation. The revelation 
of God is one thing, but a prior and equally neces- 
sary thing is that man should make a revelation of 
himself; that is, a revelation of what is evil and de- 
mands acure. For evil, as a purely spiritual matter, 
hid in the heart, is not so very obvious, and is all the 
less so that we are so much accustomed to it, and so 
necessarily blunted by it. Hence it becomes a great 
and forward problem in the world’s economy, how to 
get evil most effectually revealed to itself. And it is 
done, as we shall see, in three principal modes or de- 
grees; namely, in what we are and do to inferiors, 
what we do as between equals, and what we do in con- 
ditions of power that give authority. 

Thus if one is hard upon the poor, harsh to children, 
cruel to animals, he makes, or may, a very great discov- 
ery of himself; such as, simply sitting down to muse 


OF BAD GOVERNMENT. 63 


or think within himself, it would even be impossible to 
make. What is in him is brought forth by his acts, 
and distinctly mirrored in them. The same is true of his 
conduct amongequals. If he is unjust, passionate, severe, 
revengeful, jealous, dishonest, and supremely selfish, he 
is in just that scale of society, or social relationship, 
that brings him out to himself. Simply existing, with 
so much evil in him, would give him no such impres- 
sions; but the friction of his life among equals, in 
neighborhood and family, in trade and travel, in soci- 
ety and opinion, keeps him all the while astir, and lets 
him forth in continual self-discovery. He can not slink 
away out of sight into the obscurity and occult mean- 
ness of his own self-containing silence, but he is obliged 
to feel his torment, and reveal his malady, both ‘to 
himself and to others. 

But the full, sufficient, supremely impressive revela- 
tion is never made save in the condition of authority, 
and it appears to be one of the great ends of civil soci- 
ety, to prepare and bring forth to the general sense of 
mankind this revelation. The fact is recognized that 
government is wanted, and must somehow or other be 
had, and then society as it is—the weak, the wicked, 
the foolish, the strong, all mixed up together, and 
brewed historically as a caldron heated by much fire—is 
to throw up leaders, chiefs, princes, magistrates, constitu- 
tions, here in one form and here in another, and what man 
can do for himself, in getting up protections and protect- 
ors,is to be seen. And a very considerable part of his 
benefit is to be gotten by his failures, Evil is scarcely to 


64 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


be known as evil, till it takes the condition of author 
ity. We do not understand it till we see what kind of 
god it will make, and by what sort of rule it will man- 
age its empire. So it results, that bad men get their 
ascendency, because there is badness in the world; and 
then they rule the world as tormentors and tyrants, 
because they must needs act out the evil that is in 
them. In this very simple statement, we have the 
short account of how large a part of the world’s bitter- 
est woes! This one word oppression, what a history 
has it !—in the tears and groans and robberies and cap- 
tivities and shackled bodies and desolate homes of man- 
kind; in so many peoples moaning to each other, age 
upon age, the outcast lot of merit, and the ernel perse- 
cution of religion ; in so many times of dejection when 
society loses hope and possibility under the humiliations 
of defeat, the prostrations of industry, the disabilities 
of debt, the violated honor of contracts and treaties— 
representing, all, the madness of power. The feeling 
brought forth in this manner, and kept in painful 
tension, under almost all experiences of power, is the 
feeling of wrong, bitter oppression and abuse, mockery 
of right and reason, and the cry goes up audible or 
silent to God—O Lord ! how long, how long? 

What now is this but a conviction impresred, or rev- 
elation made, of some dreadfully malign principle in 
our humanity. It can not bear elevation. Power 
makes a demon of it. And yet we go on trying tc 
make society safe, and organize some kind of power 
that will save us from the abuses of power—a task that 


OF BAD GOVERNMENT. 65 


is, alas! how difficult. But this cne grand fact or issue 
is at least made sure, and it is of greater moral conse- 
quence than success itself would be; namely, that in 
all our nations and families that class above the grado 
of barbarism, we are kept in continual stress, or strain, 
to conquer a condition of right and safe protection. 
Hence all the struggles, agitations, and great revolu- 
tions for liberty, from the times of the Greeks down- 
ward. Almost every people have had in turn their 
Draco, their Pisistratus, and their thirty tyrants more 
or less, and the struggle has been going on, everywhere, 
in every age, to heave off the burdens of oppres- 
sion and pluck down the oppressors, and conquer, if 
possible, some state of law and liberty; for what we 
mean by liberty is not release from law, but a state of 
security and sheltered equity under it. Such liberty, 
how dear to man! made dear, by what ages of trial and 
sorrow under the loss of it! The very idea of such lib- 
erty is moral, and the grand struggle of the ages to gain 
it is a struggle after moral ideas and the sublime, divine 
equities of law. And just here all the merit of God’s 
plan, as regards the permission of power in the hands 
of wicked men, will be found to hinge; namely, on 
the fact, that evil is not only revealed in its balefu 
presence and agency, but the peoples and ages are put 
heaving against it, and struggling after deliverance 
from it. We do not commonly think of it—this tossing 
of men’s souls after liberty—-as being moral at all; we 
call it political, but the contest, if we can but see it, 
hangs entirely on such moral ideas of right and benefi- 


66 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


cence as are staple matters in gospel itself. Our very 
struggle against the domination of evil-doers puts us 
so far in respect of right, and begets a kind of salutary 
prejudice in us against evil. Even if we never pray for 
this holy boon of equity and right which power has 
robbed us of, we do, at least, long heavily, strive earn- 
estly, suffer manfully, and fight in life’s peril to regain 
it. What we call society, kept heaving in this kind of 
struggle, becomes intensely moral, and all we do for it 
is done to make our life endurable, by the re-establish- 
ment of just such muniments of right as we have 
ourselves cast off. As far as we go, we are fighting 
ourselves up into redemption. Not that every man 
who is earnest for liberty, is trying how to become a 
saint, but that, in a certain general way, the drift 
and striving of society is toward conditions of right 
and equity, such as faithfully accord, when deeply 
sounded, with all the highest and divinest principles of 
duty. And how great a point is this to be gained in a 
world under evil! 

We do not always turn ourselves about in pious re- 
flections, it is true, on what we are doing in these 
matters—do not imagine perhaps that we are getting 
human evil revealed by these woes of wrong and op- 
pression ; still less that when we are rioting and wrest- 
ling for liberty, we are drawing toward everlasting 
principles of right and divine reason; probably still 
less, that we are uncovering, in all, the glory of God 
and God’s true magistracy. Here is power that wants 
no checks and balances to keep it safe; here is duc 


OF BAD GOVERNMENT. 67 


shelter for the weak; here is equity for the proud and 
the vivlent themselves; here is justice never perverted, 
and law never misapplied. All this exactly is what 
we are striving after, and yet we do not see it; what 
has our great struggle with bad power to do with God? 
We have no thought in it of being at allreligious. Just 
80, it is probably true; and still I am obliged to believe . 
that religious ideas are brought as much closer to us, 
as we are brought closer to them, and God as much 
closer to our feeling as religious ideas are more closely 
bound up with our successes. What is the great political 
reformer and champion of his people doing, under sc 
many abuses of power, but contending for terms of 
right and benefit? What is he maintaining but that 
government is for the benefit of the governed?—based, 
in this manner, in the supreme law of beneficence. 
What then is he doing but affirming and glorifying 
God’s “powers”? And what is more likely, more 
necessary in fact, than that he and the people that 
follow him will be drawn sometimes to think of God 
more approvingly and with a softer feeling. They 
want beneficence—how bitterly do the poor creatures 
ache for it !—and here it is, full-orbed and ideally per- 
fect. It is quite impossible that nations, struggling 
thus after deliverance from iniquitous power, and the 
establishment of righteous liberty, should not more 
easily be drawn to God and religion. They may for 
the time be less religiously reverent, they may rather 
seem to have their affinities with all kinds of unbelief, 
but their real bent even then is better than it seems 


68 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


they only disbelieve what power has so. fearfully 
abused; but God as he is, when fitly seen, will be 
more easily loved as the world’s Great Friend and 
Keeper. 

We discover also, what accords with this, that all 
our modern advances in the department of government 
and public liberty are attended by another kind of 
advance which is moral, and exactly keeps pace with 
them. Our constitutions, our limitations of monarchy, 
our abatements of priestly despotism, our vindication 
of free thought and opinion, our new created parlia- 
ments, our emancipations, our world-free commerce 
under world-wide guaranties of law—while we are 
asserting in all these forms the supreme right of society 
to be ruled for its own good, there begins to be a defer- 
ence paid almost everywhere to the principle of benefi- 
cence itself. We assert the brotherhood of man; we 
take part in feeling with weakness and dejection the 
world over; we educate our own peoples and try to 
evangelize others; we think we begin to see how party 
can be organized and held fast in right, instead of 
being wild force only, organized by the cohesiveness 
of plunder. Moral ideas are set up in publie argu- 
ments, incorporated in the documents of thrones, and 
also begin to have an acknowledged place in statesman- 
ship. Not only do magistrates by election, but the 
most absolute princes, admit the strictly moral tenure 
of their rule, and their obligation to rule only for the 
good of their people. The change, in one view, is a 
result of Christianity, beginning, at last, to win ite — 


OF BAD GOVERNMENT. 69 


true place in society. In another view it is due to the 
immense struggles of our modern nations after liberty; 
instigated originally by the oppressions and the unen- 
durable wrongs of wickedness in power. Both concur, 
one as a power moving down upon society from with- 
out, the other as a power bursting up out of society 
instructed by its woes. 

It requires to be added, for the complete develop- 
ment of this subject, that political society makes no 
real and permanent gain when it makes a conquest for 
liberty, save as that gain is utilized and set fast in the 
department of moral ideas and principles. We have 
just passed through a great public contest for example, 
not with our thirty tyrants, but our thirty or three 
hundred thousand tyrants of slavery, to induce and 
bring to the ground the malign power they were assert- 
ing above our laws and institutions. They had been 
educated to .be tyrants, and could not be republicans, 
There was never any possibility that a leadership 
trained by slavery should not make a magistracy con- 
temning right and the restraints of law. They now 
lie prostrate, and their many-headed tyranny is broken ; 
and yet there is nothing done for true liberty in them 
by merely forced emancipation of their slaves. Give 
them power, and it will be bad power still, until the 
gain is utilized and made fast in their moral feelings 
and opinions. They can never be republicans till they 
get into the divine principle of law, as the guardian of 
liberty. If the tyrannical passion of mastership is in 
their hearts, if the slavery stays by morally, though 


70 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


broken physically, they can not be citizens in any true 
republic. 

Let them have the condition of power, and it would 
be bad power, still impossible, as ever, to be kept in 
terms of allegiance. There have been a great many 
overthrows of bad power in the world, but not one of 
them has ever been a gain to liberty, save as there has 
been some moral gain accomplished, to sanctify and 
set in place the principles of right and beneficence. 
How many republics have the French people had pro- 
claimed during this present century! Have they 
gained their liberty? Just as much of it as they have 
gained in moral convictions, principles, ideas of right, 
and duty. If they should only gain a little more, they 
might bear the liberty of the press, and perhaps Napo- 
leon could bear it too. So if we proclaim the republic, 
as against slavery, ten times in a century, we’shall only 
gain upon the slavery as far as God’s free principles— 
goodness and true brotherhood—are incorporated, by 
our ten campaigns against it; and it makes a very 
great difference, be it observed, whether it is they 
campaigning for liberty themselves, or we campaigning 
for it in them. 

It remains, in conclusion, to suggest what appears to 
be a very important deduction, as regards the moral 
uses of abused power, that it would be a very great 
misfortune to any people who are loose and low in 
their moral ideas, to have a smooth and equitable 
government kept up among them for a great length of 
time. If, by some mischance, some power of right 


OF BAD GOVERNMENT. 71 


tradition, or a kind temperament in a royal stock, some 
adjustment of checks and balances, some distribution 
of public functions in the departments of legislation, 
of justice, and of executive administration—if in any 
such way the government should keep itself in whole- 
some respect to right, when the people are growing 
selfish, and dastardly, and cruel, and sensual, and false- 
hearted, and knavish in trade, what is there, in the 
east of their history, to make them any better? Mani- 
festly nothing. What they want is bad government, 
and a good long time of it; and what they want they 
will have, though it may come late. They must have 
a call for courage, else they will never get it, and they 
must groan bitterly, before they can raise that ery for 
liberty that rallies courage. The only good medicine 
for their selfishness will be found in their public sacri- 
fices. Much blood-letting will be needed to get their 
meanness out of them. If they are cruel and treach- 
erous—for the two things commonly go together—they 
will get a softer, truer magnanimity in the heroics of 
liberty. Their time may not come along just as we 
imagine, but it will come. Let us not imagine that it 
will not come to us, because we have a government 
written out. Men are not controlled by the wrappings 
of paper. If we come to want a usurper, and make a 
bid for one by our moral degeneracy, our sycophancy, 
our violence and reckless passion, we shall have him. 
A thoroughly wicked majority is enough to make as 
much wickedness in power as we can find how to 
master. There is, in fact, no tyranny so dreadful as 


72 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


that tyranny by the million, which is organized by a 
corrupt party. It is not, of course, smooth sailing that 
we have to do in future, as many are ready to assume, 
As we have had to groan for our deliverance, so may 
also our children. Better is it for them, if they require 
it. Have we not ourselves gotten benefit out of our 
sacrifices? Do we not feel strengthened mightily in 
our principles? Do we not seem to have had a new, 
grandly moral sense of them opened in our hearts? 
In that sense, maintained by whatever means, let the 
republic stand. 


IV. 


OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 


Ir there be any thing worth living for, in the case of 
& man ora people, most of us would be ready, by a 
kind of natural inference, to conclude that there must 
be so much that is worth being remembered. In this 
inference, too, we are helped by the filial reverence 
that binds us to the men or ages that have gone before 
us, and by the almost invincible instinct of historic 
curiosity itself; allowing us never to rest without know- 
ing something of the strange world-field behind us, and 
the seeds out of which we have come. We have it also 
as a maxim, that we differ as men from the brutes, 
chiefly in our capacity to profit by example, and we 
even go so far in this matter, as to think that we make 
out real philosophies of history. And yet of all that 
we call history—that is, human history—the greater 
part is dead, utterly gone out and lost. The rocks of 
the world have registered the story of creatures far 
inferior. Even the birds have printed their tracks, and 
the rain drops spattered their marks on the pages of 
the register ; but of man’s great history, so much later 
begun, and so much deeper in its meaning, only the 


dimmest and most scanty vestiges remain, to represent 
4 


74 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


whole thousands of years. What thoughts wrestled in 
those dim centuries; what songs were sung; what 
structures reared; what names figured; what peoples 
tramped across the fields of time in their marches and 
wars—all these are gulfed in oblivion, and practically 
tousare not. Descending to what are nominally called 
first eras, we begin to gather up traditions, and vestiges, 
and scanty and dry records, that have a certain historic 
look, but not much of history. And the history is 
scarcely more real when we come to the times of defi- 
nite and formal narrative; only a few forward names 
and events, and figures, are put moving as shadows in 
the story, but what the vast populations have been 
doing, what they have felt, and been, is dead; not only 
not recited in the past tense of grammar, but having no 
longer any tense at all. Not even the recent past is 
preserved accurately enough to be really known. Who 
ever fails to note the misconceptions, or only half con- 
ceptions of a written story, having lived in the time, 
and been a part of the transaction, himself? And how 
many that read this article, after all they may have 
heard of their own grandfather and the facts and in- 
cidents of his life, will be able to feel that they truly 
possess the man. Probably there is a kind of mythic 
air in so many stories and traditions, such as seem to be 
shadows only of his life and person—nothing more, 
and scarcely so much as that. 

Now it will be obvious to any one at a glance, that 
God has not made any such thing as a complete 
remembrance of past ages possible. He writes oblivion 


OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 75 


against all but a few names and things, and empties the 
world to give freer space for what is to come. No 
tongue could recite the whole vast stury if it were 
known, the world could not contain the books if it 
were written, and no mind reading the story could give 
it possible harbor. Besides, there are things in the 
past which no tradition can accurately carry and no 
words represent. Who that will untwist the subtle 
motives of action can do it far enough to make out 
any thing better than a tolerable fiction! Who can 
paint a great soul’s passion as that passion, looked 
upon, painted itself? To come down to things more 
humble, yet by no means less significant, by what 
words can any one find how to set forth a gait ora 
voice? And yet, if I could simply see the back of Cato 
jogging out a-field, or hear one sentence spoken by 
Ceesar’s voice, it really seems to me I should get a bet- 
ter knowledge of either, from that single token, than J 
have gotten yet from all other sources. So very im- 
potent are words to reproduce, or keep in impression 
the facts and men of history. We have a way of 
speaking, in which we congratulate ourselves on the 
score of a distinction between what are called the un- 
historic and historic ages. The unhistoric, we fancy, 
make no history, because they have no written language. 
But having such a gift, with paper to receive the re 
cord of it, and types to multiply that record, and libra- 
ries to keep it, and, back of all, a body of learned 
scribes, who are skilled in writing history as one of the 
elegant arts, we conclude that now the historic age has 


76 MORAL USES OF DARK TIIINGS. 


come. We do not perceive, that, in just this manner, we 
are going to overwrite history, and write so much of it 
that we shall have really none. If we had the whole 
world’s history written out in such detail of art, we 
could not even now make any thing of it—the historic 
shelf of our library would girdle the world. What, 
then, will our written history be to us, after it has got- 
ten fifty millions of years into its record? for we must 
not forget that the age we live in is but the world’s 
early morning. Calling it the historic age, then, what 
are we doing in it but writing-in oblivion, as the un- 
historic age took it without writing at all? 

By a simple glance in this direction, we perceive that 
God, for some reason, scrutable or inscrutable, has de- 
termined to let large tracts of past events be always 
passing into oblivion; and though it disappoints, to a 
certain extent, that filial instinct which unites us to 
the past, and puts us on the search to find, if pos- 
sible, who are gone before us and what they have 
done, I think we shall discover uses enough, and those 
which are sufficiently beneficent, to comfort us in the 
loss. 

And, first of all, it will be seen that we do not lose 
our benefit in the past ages, because we lose the re- 
membrance of their acts and persons. Do the vegetable 
growths repine or sicken because they can not remem- 
ber the growths of the previous centuries? Is it not 
enough that the very soil that feeds them is fertilized 
by the waste of so many generations moldering in it? 
The principal and best fruits of the past ages come 


OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 77 


down to us, even when their names do not. If they 
wrought out great inventions, these will live without 
a history. If they unfolded great principles of society 
and duty, great principles do not die. If they brought 
their nation forward into power and a better civiliza. 
tion, the advances made are none the less real that 
their authors are forgotten. Their family spirit passed 
into their family, and passes down with it. Their man- 
ners and maxims and ideas flavored their children; 
then, after them, their children’s children; and so more 
truly live, than they would in a book. About every 
thing valuable in a good and great past is garnered in 
oblivion ; not to be lost, but to be kept and made fruit- 
ful. For it is not true that we have our advantage in 
the past ages mainly in what we draw from their ex- 
ample, or gather from the mistakes of their experience. 
We have our benefit in what they transmit, not in what 
we go after and seek to copy. And passing into causes, 
they transmit about every thing they are; and, to a 
great extent, their corrections for what they are not; 
producing emendations probably in us, that are better 
than they could find how to make in themselves. 

But we do not really strike the stern moral key of 
Providence in this general sentence of oblivion passed 
upon the race, till we make full account of the fact that 
the major part of our human history is bad in the mat- 
ter of it. This, to some, will seem uncharitable, or 
unduly severe; but if they feel it necessary to be 
offended, they have only to run over the general bill 
of written history, and see what makes the staple mat- 


78 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


ter of the record, to perceive how faithfully the stricture 
holds. Very few good men, and very few really great 
deeds figure in the record. Great wrongs, oppressions, 
usurpations, enmities, desolations of unholy war, perse- 
cutions of righteousness and truth, are the chief head- 
ings of the chapters. The eminent characters are, for the 
most part, eminently bad, or even abominably wicked. 
And when the staple matter of the story is less revolt- 
ing, it is generally not because there is a better mind 
or motive, but only because an immense cloak of hypoe- 
risy is habitually drawn over actions, to make them less 
disgusting, and more decent-looking than they really 
are. Nothing prodigiously bad is done by many, sim- 
ply because of the mean, dastardly, selfish spirit which 
dares not heartily do the evil it thinks. In this view, 
as I conceive, the major part of man’s history is bad— 
better, therefore, to be forgotten than to be remem- 
bered ; pitch it down under all-merciful oblivion, and 
let both sight and smell of it be gone forever. We 
want a clean atmosphere, and there is no way to give 
it, but to let the reeking filth and poison pass off. 
Even if we did not copy so many bad things cramming 
our memory, it would cost us incredible damage sim- 
ply to be meeting and taking the look, every moment, 
of these bad images, whether we copy them or not. We 
could not be familiar with such types of evil, without 
being fouled by them, and, therefore, God has merei- 
fully ordained a limbo into which they may be gathered 
and sunk out of sight. Who could be less than a rep- 
robate, having all the monster villainies of the past ages 


OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 79 


crowded into his memory, and compelling him tc have 
their touch upon his feeling day and night? But as God 
has ordered the world, he is all the while making it mor- 
ally habitable, by successive purgations. He permits us 
to breathe safely, in permitting us to know almost noth 
ing of the bad past. And the institution of written 
history does not very much vary our condition. Who 
of us does not remember instances of very bad and very 
brilliant men, who were the common talk of their times, 
but are now less and less frequently mentioned, and will 
shortly be quite forgot? Good men are not so easily 
forgotten; partly because they are more rare; partly 
because they take hold of respect, which is firmer and 
more fixed than memory ; and partly because their good 
is closer to the principle of immortality, imbibing life 
therefrom. Hence they stay longer, lingering as benig- 
nant stars in the sky, while the bad and wicked are 
mercifully doomed to make blank spaces for them, and 
contribute what of benefit they can by their absence. 
“The name of the wicked shall rot”—this is their gos- 
pel; which, if it be wholly negative, is so far grandly 
salutary. 

Consider, also, in this connection, how certainly we 
create a better past, when the real and frequently bad 
past dies, or is lost. And for this very purpose it would 
seem that God has set every thing sliding away into 
oblivion. He means it for our moral benefit; so that 
when the actual past is faded away, we may retouch it, 
or create another, by an idealizing process of our own. 
We know that other generations have lived before us, 


80 MORAL USES OF ARK THINGS. 


and also that we .ad ancestors, and though we hunt 
after traditions, and keep family registers, we really 
know very little more. But we think we know, be 
cause we imagine; for our busy imagination begins 
half unwittingly to fill up our blank spaces with pater- 
nities and maternities, and, in fact, with whole popula- 
tions and ages, such as we can think ideally, and 
probably a great deal better than the real fatherhoods 
and motherhoods whose places they occupy. So we get 
rid of a bad past by oblivion, and set up a good, or at 
least better one, for ourselves; such as will not harm 
us to think of, or shame us to remember. And this 
imaginary fatherhood and people of the past—what 
reverence do we pay them, in which reverence to be 
profoundly profited and blessed? What better can a 
great and worthy filial feeling do than to create and 
sanctify a great and worthy past? and then, when it is 
so created and sanctified, what will it more certainly © 
do than to make itself more filial in return, and morally 
better every way? We do not commonly state the mat- 
ter in this form. We know the very names of our 
grandfather and grandmother, and likewise, it may be, 
even of theirs. So we think we have them, in merely 
having their names. Doubtless, it is something to have 
their names, because we may so easily put our own feel- 
ing and desire into them; and if we have beside some 
few scant vestiges of knowledge, these also are dear; 
but more commonly the names and vestiges we body 
into men and women have little body, or meaning, or 
merit, to attract our reverence or support our praise, 


OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 81 


save as we ourselves give it. And, in just this manner, 
we have it as one of our delightful occupations to be 
creating our own grandfathers and grandmothers; and, 
in fact, the general past we seek to revere. And it isa 
most excellent opportunity; for these ideal men and 
women are wholesome to think of, and the more we 
honor them the more they do for us. 

In this manner we get the advantages of a tolerably 
good world behind us—just such a world as we cer- 
tainly could not have, but for that ordinance of supreme 
oblivion that makes room for it. It is a very great 
thing for us morally that we shape so many ideals, for 
we escape, in doing it, the awfully foul tyranny of 
facts; and our ideals are just as much more real than 
the facts, as they are better and closer to the wants of 
character. Therefore doubtless it is, that so great lib- 
erty is given us in the creating of our own past. We 
escape thus into another and generally better realm, 
where the air is more free and the attractions more 
pure. We have ideal personages with us, and, what 
signifies much for us, they are at least as good as we most 
naturally try to think, And they have the greater power 
and value to us, that they seem to loom up into quality 
and magnitude out of the unknown, whence we our- 
selves have evoked them. We see them fringed about 
with mystery thus, calling them “reverend fathers of 
mankind.” ‘ Whatever is unknown,” says the proverb, 
““we take for something great.” Oblivion itself is a 
great magnifier, raising the names we idealize and 


idolize into sublimity, by the haze of unknown merit 
4* 


82 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


through which it permits us to see them. And the gods 
of the mythologies appear to have been created largely, 
thus, out of the unknown reverend fathers idealized— 
only their sanctities were rubbed off shortly, or defiled, 
by the gross actualities of practical use. 

How far this idealizing method or law is taken ad- 
vantage of, in a way of supplementing real history, and 
giving the greater power and value to a few bold 
touches of narrative than a full circumstantial record 
could possibly have, may not be at once decided. But 
we all recognize it as the wondrous felicity of certain 
characters that we know so little about them, and yet 
seem to know so much, and that of a type so impress- 
ive. We say that we wish it were possible to know 
more, which is very nearly equivalent, not unlikely, if 
we could see it, to wishing that we knew less. For if 
their full story were written, so as to answer all inqui- 
ries, and bring all circumstances into light, the addi- 
tions made would rather stale and flatten the great 
character than raise it; for one must be a singularly 
perfect man to be lifted in majesty by picking up the 
crumbs and saving the small items of his story. What 
greater injury, in general, can befall a character, than 
to have its story made up in such nice precision ag 
exactly to meet the little curiosities of little minds? Te 
be so perfectly known argues a sad want of merit, and, 
if the perfect story is but fiction, amounts to almost a 
scandal. If Hamlet were known as perfectly, or ex- 
haustively, as some of the critics will show when they 
make out his story, he would not be Hamlet longer. If 


OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 83 


Joan of Are, not flitting into history and out again, had 
come abroad duly certificated, with the facts of her 
biography regularly made up, and all her supposed 
visitations, revelations, debates, bosom struggles and 
motives accurately detailed, she would only seem to 
have been a case for the hospital, and would, in fact, 
have been sent to the hospital before she reached the 
field. She struck, she won the post of leadership as in 
God’s mission, because she spoke out of mystery, and 
took the faith of her time by the spell she wrought in 
its imagination. And she wins a place with us in the 
same manner, compelling us to supplement her almost 
unknown story, by the faiths and admirations chal- 
lenged by the wondrous, seemingly divine, force of 
her action. And therefore it is, I conceive, that 
when God would paint, or have painted, some highest, 
grandest miracle of character, setting it forth in a way 
to have its greatest power of impression, he makes 
large use of oblivion, brushing out and away all the 
trivialities and petty cumberings of the story. Let the 
blank spaces be large enough to give imagination play, 
and, for this, let as much be forgotten as can be, and 
save the few grand strokes that are to be the determin- 
ing lines of the picture; let the story be so scantily 
told that we shall often wonder, and sometimes even 
sigh, that we have so little of it. Only so could a 
real gospel be written. What we call our gospel is 
so written, and no such life as that of a Christ could be 
otherwise given to the world. A full-written, circum- 
stantial biography would be a mortal suffocatinn of his 


84 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


power. There was no way but to let oblivion compose 
a good part of the story. And if we can not imagine 
oblivion to be inspired, we can perceive it to be one of 
the grandest of all evidences of inspiration in the writ- 
ers, that they could not stoop to over-write and mud- 
dle their story, by letting their foolish admirations pack 
it full of detail. How very natural would it have been 
to write a particular account of the infancy of Jesus, 
and of the whole thirty years preceding his ministry, 
telling how he grew, and looked, and acted, and what 
the people thought of him, calling it perhaps the Vol. I. 
of his biography. How often have we regretted this 
missing picture, and longed to have it supplied— 
with how much real wisdom we can probably see in 
that foolish Gospel of the Infancy which undertook 
afterward to supply it. How easily could it have been 
given by any one of the Evangelists. And yet their 
whole account of the infancy is made up in a few brief 
sentences. John, the apostle, had Mary, the mother, 
with him, we know not how many years, and she told 
the story over, how tenderly, how many times. He was 
getting old, too, when he wrote his gospel, and old men 
are proverbially garrulous; and yet he says not one 
word of the infancy, or gives any faintest allusion to 
Mary’s conversations. No; he has something great to 
record here, and something which can be fitly honored 
only in a few bold strokes of narrative, such as will 
even make the story idealize itself more vividly than 
words can describe it. Why should he pile it with car- 
goes of circumstance, when the world itself could not 


OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 85 


contain the books, and Christ himself would be written 
out of his divinity, by an itemizing gospel that pro- 
poses to enhance his record. On this principle all the 
gospels were written. The wonder is, that so much is 
let go for oblivion when so much could be easily told. 
And the result is that, being put in this manner to the 
supplementing ideally of what is so massively, yet sum- 
marily, given, we get a Christ who proves himself to 
our feeling as much by what is not said, but left to our 
faith to supply, as by what is told in so great brevity 
and boldness of confidence. The story is told as if it 
were believed, and had power to make itself believed. 
I will not say that every great character must be shown 
as the “ Word made flesh” required to be. More of 
circumstance is permissible in the inferior characters, 
and consistent with a due respect. Yet even a great, 
good man, may be sadly weakened by over-remem- 
brance. His moral value depends on his getting far 
enough into oblivion to be strongly remembered. Not 
even the sun is half as bright in clear, full day, as when 
he. burns a passage through his clouds, proving his 
effulgence by the obscuration he has overcome and the 
close, black setting in which he is envisaged. Nothing 
is sufficiently revealed which does not refuse to be hid, 
and has force to burst into knowledge through oblivion 
—through clouds, through falsifications of enmity and 
prejudice. On the other hand, nothing is so little 
known as that which is lugged into knowledge. 


Passing hence to other points more promiscuously 


86 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


related to the general subject, it may further increase 
our good opinion of the moral uses of oblivion, that it 
sometimes proves and magnifies its consequence by not 
coming soon enough, or not expunging names and 
characters that only perpetuate their evil in being 
remembered. What we call the aristocracies of the 
world are generally grounded in such. I take no part 
- here as against social and political distinctions because 
they offend the principle of equality. I speak of aris- 
tocracy as a purely moral affair, where its real demerit 
is commonly overlooked by assailants. Few persons 
appear, in fact, to make any just observation of the 
stupendous immorality in which these high conven- 
tionalisms have their beginning. Orders might exist in 
a world not under evil, but orders of caste are based 
in evil itself, and commonly show it by their origin. 
Thus, how many noble families in England take their 
beginning from some castled robber, some wild chieftain 
or pirate ravaging the seas—any kind of man that 
was the terror and principal thief of his time, eight 
hundred or a thousand years ago. Barbarians, men 
of lust, high wassailers drinking out of the skulls of 
their victims, freebooters winning a crest by the pillage 
of a province—any thing is good enough that is bad 
mough to get a name. And the misery here is that 
ramily ambition gets the start of oblivion, and is able, 
against the laws of Providence, to embalm its founder 
in the honors of wickedness; which honors of wicked- 
ness, having won it a crest, it is very likely to emulate 
and perpetuate. Hence the generally unmoral or 


OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 87 


demoralizing power of aristocracy; abjuring, at the 
beginning, the principles of God and the brotherhood 
of man, and assuming to be ennobled by wrong. Usurp- 
ation is better to it than right, because it gets more 
play of will in daring insult to right, and asserting its 
pre-eminence by the self-elation of its manners. There 
are, I know, many virtuous and really good men in the 
noble ranks of the world; men who are morally en- 
nobled by their worth and modesty ; which signifies a 
great deal more, and puts them back consentingly into 
the acknowledged brotherhood of their race. Allowing 
such exceptions, it is not to be denied, as a matter of 
history, that the very worst, most hideous, most dis- 
gusting crimes ever committed in human society, have 
been perpetrated under the instigations and within 
the honored circles of nobility. The wrongs by which 
these chieftain classes trampled the happiness, and 
mocked the rights of the inferior orders, in the former 
ages, make a most sad and revolting chapter of history. 
Could the broom of oblivion, ordained for wickedness, 
have only swept away clean the dates and recollections 
out of which such monsters grew, how great the moral 
and social benefit that would have followed. Exactly 
this, most happily, is done for us. We have abun- 
dance, doubtless, of noble and even royal blood, 
sprinkled through our American families, but we do 
not know it or care for it. All such airy notions of 
quality and absurdities of date-worship are fenced 
away from us by walls of oblivion. We have and 
want no footing but the common brotherhood of man. 


88 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


All the more hopeful, and brighter in new possibility, 
is the great moral future before us. Owning God’s 
appointed brotherhood, what shall follow but that we, 
at last, be grounded filially in his principles. We shall 
thus achieve a new and better form of society, because 
oblivion has come to our help, as it bas not hitherto, 
save partially, to the more ancient civilizations of 
Europe. 

Meantime it will be seen that in another department 
of life, somewhat related, the law that keeps opinion 
flexible and free has never failed of its office. I speak 
here of the part which God himself is always maintain- 
ing, in the expurgation of history, against what may 
be called the over-conservative, anti-moral tendencies 
ef many. There isa good and much-wanted conser- 
vatism, viz.: that which can bravely withstand precipi- 
tate measures, and subversive and wild innovations, 
sanctifying, in conviction, what conviction has sancti- 
fied; but there is also a bad, unmoral, sometimes 
almost immoral conservatism, which is very different. 
A certain class of men, without courage, or imagina- 
tion, or high moral convictions, are never able to see 
that any thing can be in respect save what is now re- 
spectable, and contrive to be always fawning about the 
idols already set up, with sophistries and cold servilities 
of argument, that amount to a worship nothing better 
than hypocrisy. To consider what is wanted, or is 
true, or in real candor obligatory, is not in them; but 
they are emulous of selectness or high associations, and 
think it safer and more skillful to coast along the past, 


OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 89 


aud not strike out where the needle only of responsi- 
bility can guide them. These timid Chinese souls are 
going always to save a Celestial Empire, not to make 
one; and the danger was that they would get so 
stunted in courage and imagination, that nothing 
would be left to carry on the grand progressions of 
morality—nothing left but a hopelessly effete and 
lapsed condition, under the tyranny of the past. No 
greater misfortune to character could befall the world. 
It was a great problem, therefore, how to keep off this 
’ tyrannizing power, and hold the race in courage, fore- 
thought, self-determination, and that free advance in 
truth which is necessary to a great future in character. 
And here is the meaning, herein lies the value, of that 
vast, wide-sweeping, almost undiscriminating oblivion 
that God has let in as a gulf-stream to sweep the past 
away. Plainly enough he is no conservative in the 
style of what is commonly called conservatism. He is 
always letting things come into the world that he will 
not let stay in it. Almost every thing done here is 
done for transition, not for stationary fixture. He is 
always saying, not to old men only, but also to old 
fact, “pack and be gone, that new fact may come in, 
finding room and fresh air.” He will not let us keep 
ourselves on hand over-largely, lest, if we remember 
too much of our past, we get stalled under it, and die 
before life is ended. A great many things appear to 
be swept away and lost that we should suppose might 
be saved, and here and there something is saved that 
we should think might as well be forgot. We wonder 


90 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 


especially that some very bad names are stuck in im- 
mortality, as flies in amber, and preserved—only we 
may note that, as it is without much advantage either 
to the amber or the flies, but with real advantage to 
science in both, to have their date and story so regis- 
tered, so it was necessary that some bad names, such 
as the Nimrods, and Ahithophels, and Neros, and Bor- 
gias might furnish, should stay for long-remembered 
ages, and allow us to get courage in the discovery, that 
our own bad men are no new product of our degenerate 
times, but were even preceded by worse. Be this as it 
may, we do have it fixed as an impression, and it is an 
impression that deeply concerns our moral benefit, that 
nothing has, or ought to have, any sure chance against 
the broom of oblivion, save what belongs to principle. 
And even principles will require a great winnowing 
out of men, and require to be many times winnowed 
and redeveloped themselves, before they are settled 
into their true interpretations, and forms, and places. 
A great many things, we thus perceive, are not to be 
conserved, but to pass; and we are never to be worried, 
or thrown out of courage, because even what is good 
appears to be going; for if the good is making room 
for what is better, and the admirable for what is more 
to be admired, what reason have we for regret? Above 
all, let there be no timid and heartless emulation of 
past things, taking refuge under them from the bold 
responsibilities of the present. Let the passing pass, 
and the great moral ideas keep their ferment a-going, 
and new life freshening in the world. So much of 


OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 91 


gospel is there in the dreadfully negative, world-empty- 
ing work of oblivion. 

And this same lesson accrues, in another way of ben- 
efit, to the mitigation of another and less tractable kind 
of mischief. A certain class of souls that were narrow 
in quantity, and hot in conviction, were likely to get 
stalled in bigotry, becoming, in this manner, only haters 
and extirpators, in the name of duty and religion. If 
there were some way of becoming thieves, on principle, 
it would scarcely be worse. For the bigot, sacred as 
may be his pretensions, and earnest as he appears to be 
in the uncomfortable heat of his devotion, is neverthe- 
less, in almost every case, a morally sinister and evil- 
minded person—uncandid, unreasonable, jealous, some- 
times treacherous, often sensual, always cruel—all the 
worse and more thoroughly detestable, that he finds 
how to marry so much of passion with so much of what 
he thinks to be conviction. And yet he holds nothing 
as if it were true, but every thing asif it were false; 
that is by his will made fierce by his passion. Now 
this kind of character was going to be one of the greate 
est dishonors and pests of a moral system and of moral 
society. Medicines for such were therefore wanted, 
and what better could there be than this grand nar- 
eotic of oblivion, that buries, in unwaking sleep, so 
many idols, and so many bloody and fierce champions, 
that all may be forgot together. If contending earn- 
estly, as they say, for the faith, they really had faith 
and not merely contention, it would be well, but they 
make a most sad figure when we look upon them, burn- 


y2 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


ing down their life so often to a cinder, without even a 
spark of that fire that is kindled by God’s love in the 
breast. Ifsuch men had the world to themselves, they 
would make a hell-state in society, more pitiless and 
fierce, and further off from heaven’s principle, than a 
good many prison wards where felons congregate. 
How much easier, too, is it for souls under evil to be- 
come extirpators than brothers in candor and sacrifice ! 
It will not even cost the necessity of a conversion. 
How mild and beautiful a ministry for them is God’s 
deep gulf, down which they are dropping into silence and 
out of remembrance. A world to make the bigot more 
absurd than this, I think could not well be contrived. 
I must not omit to mention, last of all, the very im- 
portant change produced in the moral temper of our 
world under evil, by so many desolations and blank 
spaces in its historic map and annals. We move, and 
are largely moved, in the moral life, as in masses,— 
that is, by cities, by nations, by empires—for what we 
think and feel in such high airs of consequence and con- 
fidence, when we are bodied in some great realm or 
people—our pride, conceit of power, ambition, untama- 
ble wili—passes into our moral temper as individuals, 
and casts the habit, to a great extent, of our character 
itself. Therefore as we have free license to do as we 
will, by states, or empires, or churches, it becomes 
necessary toput these in ward, and temper them by 
needful corrections. And when we let our thought 
run over so many mere bird-tracks of oblivion etched 
on the map of history, what a picture do we see, and 


OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 93 


what sad tokens of remembrance, nearly expired, do we 
there recall. The great North African Church, stretch- 
ing along the whole south coast of the Mediterranean— 
where is it, by what single vestige is it discovered ? 
And where is the world-famous Church of Alexandria ? 
where the great Syrian, centered at Antioch? and the 
Church of Asia Minor, centered at Ephesus? If we 
call over the roll ofthe great cities, Thebes stands 
mute in stone, speaking no more. Great Carthage is 
almost as difficult to find as the body of Hannibal. Tyre 
has forgotten her merchants of old, as completely,in- 
deed as tohave a people any more. Palmyra was dis- 
covered in the eighteenth century; Babylon and Nine- 
veh have just been dug up. The cities of the Aztecs 
are overgrown rock-formations, where forests luxuriate 
as naturally as they do on the world’s geological strata. 
Ifwe speak of temples and monuments, the stones of 
the Incas remain, but the Titans that piled them are 
gone. The pyramid-temple of Cholula remains, but 
nobody can tell how it was used. The great mountain 
heaps of Egypt lift their tops as high as ever, but the 
stern old victor, Oblivion, has pressed in between the 
monuments and the monarchs they were to commem- 
orate, thrusting these away out of remembrance, and 
leaving those to be mere piles of stones. And so it is 
of the empires ; all the great empires of the East and 
South, and also of our own, falsely called new, West. 
Some of them we can locate, some of them we can trace 
by their marks, but can not even guess their names. 
What pride was there now in all these cities, temples, 


94 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


monuments, and empires, and what figure were they to 
make in the immortal ages of the future! But how 
humble, and cheap, and almost foolish they look! 
And this same power of oblivion has us al] in hand in 
the same manner, to do with us just as it will, and 
what traces of our name and fame are to be left, I do 
not know. What we built, whither we marched, 
where we fought, and whom we conquered, and the 
great leaders we honored with triumph—we really do 
not like to think that oblivion will carry all these away ; 
perhaps it will not for a very long time, but there is a 
very long time coming, which may be so long that no- 
body will name any more these proud things, or even 
know what people lived here. Or we may imagine, 
without being very absurd, that Philadelphia will 
sometime be dug over to find the marbles of Washing- 
ton. It may take a million of years to bring such 
things to pass, but our great teacher, Oblivion, is 
long-breathed, and will not have his lesson soon ended. 
And how very weak and small does our high public 
figure appear in the presence of such examples from 
the past. We slink back into ourselves, instructed and 
humbled. It is not so proud a thing to figure out our 
little day here as we sometimes try to imagine. The 
contact now of any great principle which is everlasting, 
or of God, who is the soul’s Eternal Rock and Friend—- 
how grand a thing it is, compared with any such pom- 
pous and puffy airs in the trivialities of empire and victo- 
ry. ‘‘So foolish was I and ignorant, I was asa beast 
before thee. Nevertheless, I am continually with thee!” 


Vv. 
CF PHYSICAL PAIN. 


WE recoil instinctively from pain as a matter of ex. 
perience, and only somewhat less from it as a subject. 
As it isa hard, ungenial fact, so it is a kind of surd to 
us, unreducible by thought, and generally unattractive. 
If we take it, too, in the larger view, as including the 
pains of animals, our first look stumbles us, and we 
naturally enough prefer to leave it under the chloroform 
of silence. The physiologists and physicians are obliged, 
of course, to give it their attention. A matter so pun- 
gently real, and filling so large a place in the physical 
economy, must be abundantly investigated. The nerve- 
tracks by which it comes and goes, and the disorders it 
reports, in this or that part of the body, must be studied, 
and all the pathologic symptoms and therapeutic pos- 
sibilities must be sought out. But here the inquiry ends, 
unless we include the fact that the theologians find 
something to say of the origin of pain, and the penal 
offices it fills in supplying the necessary sanctions of 
divine government. But the really great question, that 
which overtops all others—the question of moral bene- 
fit to the subjects, and to the world generally—is passed 
by, as far as I can discover, in almost total inattention. 
One little book I hear of, in a foreign tongue, that, 


96 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


judging from the title, may be an attempt of the question; 
but apart from this, I find scarcely a trace of thought 
or inquiry on the subject. A fact themore remarkable, 
that we are attempting so eagerly and treating so pro- 
fusely almost every kind of subject, whether practical 
or merely curious. Is it because this question of uses 
is too pungently moral? or is the disinclination toward 
it created by the fact, that, taken largely, as including 
the general economy of pain, the question is felt to be 
wholly mysterious and really impossible? I can not 
pretend that I suffer no such feeling myself; but I find 
it in my field, and therefore will not shrink from it. 
That I can bring it to a full solution I have really no 
confidence ; I only hope to suggest some practical as- 
pects of the points involved that may be useful, and, 
to a certain extent, satisfactory. 

Entering this field, about the first thing we meet is 
the reminder of those remarkable words of the apostle 
when he says—“ the whole creation groaneth and travail- 
eth in pain together until now.” He uses words of 
largest import, and, as if outreaching the sense of his 
time, shows, not the living world only, but the whole 
creation groaning—the rocks themselves groaning be- 
fore the animals, and the animals sinking into rock in 
groans, before man comes to his groaning life, as the 
superior occupant ; all travailing, as it were, product- 
ively and travailing together; not merely now but “ un- 
til now ”—even from the first incipiency of chaos or neb 
ular condensation, down through all progressive dates of 
order, and disorder, and providential history, and re 


OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 97 


demptive suffering, till this present hour. The world, in 
short, symbolizes pain even from the first ; begins to be a 
habitation of pain as soon as it has any kind of inhab- 
itant; becomes a habitation for the pains of intelligence 
when intelligence arrives, and continues to be as long 
as it stays. 

In this very impressive fore-glimpse of the subject, 
two points are suggested that we set our negative upon, 
before raising the question of use. (1.) That a world 
so pierced and threaded by pain is not made by God 
immediately for himself, or to gratify his own tastes and 
dispositions. Mere pain is barren and valueless taken by 
itself—he can find no revenue init. He can value it 
only as it is valuable to his subjects; and it has no value 
to them, save as they have wants of character that can be 
faithfully met by such rugged kind of discipline. (2.) 
That the condition of pain is not a result posterior in 
date to the fall or sin of mankind—no miracle of retribu- 
tion, by which, as the world is blasted and stuck with 
thorns, human bodies are also pricked with torments. 
The pains of animals, existing before, as in symbol and al- 
soin fact, may have been dependent, as in reason, on the 
superior race that were to come and the sin they would 
commit, and in that sense doubtless were posterior ; for 
how often do we see that things are prior in time which 
are post in reason. This indeed is the very highest dis- 
tinction of high counsel, that it prepares a future and 
deals with it before it arrives—which prior dealing is 
just as truly post in order, as if it were post in time. 
And then, if it should be expressly described as having 

5 


98 MORAL USES OF DARK TUINGS. 


followed in time, and as being a result of causation, or 
miraculous sentence, a very great truth would be 
affirmed in perhaps the best and only feasible manner; 
for the prior dealing is really caused by the future 2on- 
dition it was preparing to meet. Thus if truly the 
whole creation was groaning, in all orders and degrees, 
from the rocks upward, before the arrival of the occu- 
pant and his sin, prefiguring and symbolizing the great, 
sad history to come, and preparing fit environment for 
it, what so true method of telling his story as to show 
him unparadising his paradise, and provoking against 
himself, or creating for himself, the many thousand 
pangs inserted beforehand for his discipline. If I build 
a house in July for the winter to come, the winter will 
be shaping that house before the day of cold arrives. If 
there were no winter to come it would be a different 
house. Even soa world that is made for evil will be 
such as evil requires it to be, and one of the best deserip- 
tions, nay, the only feasible description of it that could 
be given to a rude age, would be that which tells how 
it was new-stamped by evil and configured retributive- 
ly to it. All this with the better truth and propriety, 
that our sorrows and pains exist only as in germs at 
the first, and are never actually developed in experi- 
ence, till it is done by the sin itself and the retribu- 
tive action of causes upon it. 

But these are points which have only a casual rela- 
tion to the main subject, viz.: the question of use. As- 
suming here that pain is for man, the question is, How? 
in what offices and uses? And here we cut off, at the 


OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 99 


beginning, three or four several answers, that plainly 
are not sufficient. 

1. It is nothing to say, or show, that being made 
sensitive to pain in certain organs and parts of the 
body, we are by that means secured against other 
bodily pains and damages more fatal. Thus the eye, 
it may be said, is offended by any disagreeable sensa- 
tion, and so closed up against the fumes of acid, or 
clouds of lime-dust, in which it is enveloped. In the 
same way, the fingers are plaited at their ends with a 
texture of fine-woven nerve, that makes them exceed- 
ingly sensitive in the matter of touch, and even the 
whole skin is so inlaid with nerve as to be a covering 
of sensibility wrapped about the body; and thus it 
goes into the world with a self-conserving instinct on 
the outlook, which notifies it of danger, and keeps it 
from fatal damage. Otherwise we might tear ourselves 
against every thorn or briar, and might even hold our 
limbs in the fire till they were burnt off; for the more 
inward parts of the body are comparatively inappre- 
hensive, and would never take care of themselves. 
_ But it does not follow that actual pain is for the con- 
servation of the body—the facts referred to are not 
large. enough to support any so broad conclusion. The 
showing is not, in the first place, that pain keeps the 
hody safe, but only that sensitiveness to pain, appre- 
hensiveness working preventively, in the organs of 
sense and the skin, keeps it alive, so far, to dangera 
that may invade the surfaces; next, that all the prin- 
cipal and worst pains we suffer are not of the apprehen 


100 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


sive and cautionary parts, but of the inward parts, and 
are such as have been produced by some kind of lesion 
or disorder—no mere notifiers of harm, but harm itself 
—pains of the flesh, and bones, and marrow ; pains of 
the head, and feet, and teeth, and lungs, and liver; 
neuralgic torments, combustions of fever-heat, chills of 
ague, rheumatisms, gouts, horrors. These are the 
pains, not the sentinels to keep off pain; and these 
stay by, and ache, and burn, and lengthen out the 
groans of their victims, and do not spare. Doubtless 
the sentinels referred to are doing beneficent service, 
but what beneficent use have these—the long, appal- 
ling, dreary catalogue ? 

2. It is no sufficient or complete account of pain to 
say that it serves economic uses, or the maintenance of 
economic functions, in the body; closing up valves, 
stopping secretions, gathering up ulcerations that will 
work off and separate disorders that might otherwise be 
fatal ; contracting the muscles in spasmodic throes, for 
the mechanical detrusion of stone, or gravel, or the 
violent ejection of poisons. All such pains are nature’s 
labor, it may be said, the conatus by which it struggles 
to clear and restore itself How is it then with pains 
that expel nothing and rectify nothing? pains of the 
head and the bones, which expel neither brains nor 
marrow, pains of the heart which commonly create 
worse pains till death ensues? pains of pleurisy that 
end in suffocation? all pains that kill and work no 
benefit—which is the natural and frequent result? Is 
it any better for a broken tooth or broken limb, that it 


OF PHYSICAL PAIN. - 101 


aches? Besides, if we imagine some conatus of the 
body, in such cases, striving to clear, or to heal itself, 
is it not found that chloroform, stopping the pain, 
allows the supposed conatus still to go on, just as 
before! Of what use then is the pain? Again :— 

3. It is nothing to say, that pain is wanted to set off 
and make duly appreciable the advantages of exemp- 
tion from pain. Dr. Paley, recurring once and again 
to this kind of argument, appears to have more satis- 
faction in it than it deserves. Not even the comforters 
of Job could have offered him more dismal consolation 
than to show him how kindly God was putting his 
plague upon him, that he might know the very great 
blessedness of being clear of it! And yet we are told 
by this very eminent teacher, that “pain has the power 
of shedding a satisfaction over intervals of ease which 
few enjoyments exceed. * * A man resting from 
the stone, or the gout, is, for the time, in possession of 
feelings which undisturbed health cannot impart. * * 
I am far from being sure that a man is not a gainer by 
suffering a moderate interruption of bodily ease for a 
couple of hours out of the four-and-twenty.” A very 
“moderate interruption” it must certainly be. We 
are not fond of learning how to be happy by being 
made miserable. The true question is, why God does 
not make us happy by happiness? Doubtless it is a 
fact, that light and shade and lines of contrast do in- 
struct our apprehensions of things, and make us more 
keenly appreciative. In this manner, evidently, God 
could make us value immensely a very little and 


102 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


short respite from pain; but that single minute’s res 
pite will be no sufficient compensation for a dreadful 
campaign of suffering continued through whole years. 
Or if we speak of the goodness put in evidence, it 
would take but a very little goodness—with a sufficient 
quantity of pain—to be even infinitely good. Mean- 
time the real question is, why we suffer any pain 
at all? 

4, It can not be said, as being any sufficient account 
of pain, that it belongs inherently to animal natures. 
Thus it is conceivable that friction pertains inherently 
to mechanism, by a necessary law, and so it may be 
imagined that pain belongs to all sentient beings 
because they are sentient—that the ancient, extinct 
races of geology were in this manner subject to death, 
and that all animate races now existing suffer pain and 
die in the same manner. Pain, it may also be said, 
belongs to them all, as being temporary natures; in 
that fact liable to pain and death, as they are to ex- 
haustion, or the decrepitude which must needs attend 
the expiration of their term. I think it must be ad- 
mitted, that all pain can be thus accounted for on the 
ground of absolute necessity, if only we consent to 
lose, or give up, the faith of a God; for the argument 
is good only when it is taken atheistically. Thus if 
animal bodies are self-existent, or products of fate, or 
chance, that may as easily be true of pain; for the 
necessity of which they are born may be as good to 
account for their suffering. But if we begin at the 
belief in God—infinitely good, infinitely wise and 


OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 103 


powerful-—such a being can make animals certainly 
that are under no necessity either of dying or suffer- 
ing. He cannot, it is true, do any thing which is im- 
possible, anything in the sphere of the unconditional, 
which is inherently beyond power. But that is not 
true of any animal nature; it belongs to the world of 
contrivance and conditionality, not to the world of 
necessity. The question therefore is, how a God, cre 
ating animals and men, can allow them to be subject to 
pain? And it is no answer to say that they must be. 
If there be no God, then it may be so; if there is, then 
why and how can it be? 

So far we obtain no real solution of pain at all, and 
there is no solution plainly to be obtained, that does 
not go above the consideration of mere physical neces- 
sities and uses. It exists for uses purely moral, and we 
get no shadow of reason for it, till we ascend to the 
higher plane of moral ideas and the scheme of religious 
discipline by which God undertakes their enforcement. 
And here we meet considerations like these :— 

1. There is a pain which belongs to the mind itself, 
in the consciousness of evil, which would almost neces- 
sarily prick through into the body, and which really 
needs, in the way of moral advantage, to be interpreted 
to the mind by the body. And this is the very idea of 
penalty or pain [pena], that it is a bad mind stung 
with moral pain, which pain is answered, interpreted, 
made more pungently just, by the pains of a disordered 
body. We all agree that moral wrong, or sin, begets, 
and must beget, a pain of the mind which we call re 


104 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 


morse, and that sc the mind has a kind of moral gov- 
ernment in its own nature. But there is apt to be a 
limit in this very subtle kind of trouble ; it begins ere 
long to blunt the sensibility, and work a state of moral 
apathy. Besides, there is a wondrous power of sophis- 
try in evil, by which it covers itself over with pretexts, 
and puts on even the semblances of good. Hence 
there was a clear necessity that souls in evil should be 
pierced and pinned through by arguments in the feel- 
ing, which can not be turned by any kind of sophistry, 
or glozed by any lapse into habitual stupor. What is 
wanted is, that some sharp, ineradicable torment shall 
prick into sensibility, and keep just conviction alive. 
And exactly this will be done by physical pain, which 
no mental apathies or sophistries can evade. Almost 
every kind of evil, too, runs to sensuality, and drugs 
the sou] in that manner, and what can better expel the 
narcotic fumes of the body, than pangs that are always 
shooting in their twinges to keep it alive, and be inter- 
preters of guilt, just where again it might very soon be 
smothered. 

All physical pain is so far penal; penal, that is, not 
in the sense that the pains of the body exactly match 
the guilt of the mind, or exactly match the particular 
comparative deserts of persons. Some persons really 
want more pain than others, and some very good per- 
sons will utilize a vastly greater amount than others 
less deserving can. The pains all come, be they many 
or few, in the lines of justice, only they do not here, in 
our present wicked state, conform exactly to the meas- 


OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 105 


ures, or keep the proportions of justice. Generally it 
is not a matter of so much importance that we have 
them in ourselves, in some given degree, as that we 
have them in the world. Some persons will be more 
beneficially affected by seeing what others suffer, than 
they would in suffering as much themselves; indeed 
they may even suffer more pungently themselves, that 
they have their natural sympathies so tenderly pained. 
The great thing is that pain is in the world by God’s 
right sentence upon it, and we know, as certainly as 
we do the goodness of God, that it is the interpreter 
of wrong—God’s moral sentence felt, beheld, every- 
where present, the frown of his abhorrence to wrong, 
the pungent witness of our guiltiness. 

2. Pain is a matter of great consequence in the fact 
that it gives a moral look and capacity of moral im- 
pression to the world, of which it would otherwise be 
totally vacant—a similar impression also of the benig- 
nity of God. If we had the world only for a garden or 
a landscape, if it meant nothing but what it is in pro- 
duction, or the delectation of the senses—a place of 
good feeding, and health, and jocund life—it would be 
God’s pasture only, not his kingdom. Moral ideas 
would not even be suggested by it. But the simply. 
finding pain in it puts us on a wholly different con- 
struction, both of it and of life. Now there appears to 
be something serious on hand. The severity bears a 
look of principle and law, and the unsparing rigors, 
hedging us about, tell of a divine purpose and authority 


that respect high reasons, and are able to be immovably 
5* 


106 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


faithful in their vindication. In this manner pain 
changes the whole import and expression of our moral 
sphere. Every pain strikes in, touching the quick of 
our remorse, and giving it practical sanction. We can 
not look about on such a spectacle of groaning, writh- 
ing members as the world exhibits, and think of it as 
being any way reconcilable with God’s perfect father. 
hood, without perceiving that there is a moral frame 
about the pict ire, that it means eternal government and 
responsibility to God. 

Having so great an effect on the world, it also has, 
we have already intimated, a correspondent effect on 
the attitude and even the accepted idea of God. As 
the world is, so’also is God; for the world is but the 
shadow of God. But the impressions we obtain of God 
are varied by the fact of pain, principally as respects 
his goodness. If there were no mixtures of pain in our 
human experience, we should have no possible concep- 
tion of severity in his goodness, but should think of it 
as being a disposition simply to gratify, and keep in 
terms of comfort or pleasure. But the stern, fixed ele- 
ment of pain—if this be good, then it is in goodness to 
be firm, unsparing, experimentally and dreadfully sov- 
ereign. Such goodness, shooting in such pangs, and 
searching a way by them into all inmost secrets of evil, 
is how very different from that unmoral goodness that 
is only concerned to please. How fearfully earnest, and 
pure, and holy, must it be, to have such abhorrences 
witnessed by such pains. These pains, too, must be 
somehow the result of retributive causes—we cannot 


OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 107 


think otherwise—end our feeling undergoes a change 
that answers exactly to the moral effectiveness given to 
public law by decisive, faithfully executed punishments. 
What the State is doing in such terrible emphasis, mus- 
tering its judicial wrath up even to the pitch of capital 
execution, must, we feel, express the opinion it has of 
law, and the moral sacredness of law. Doubtless the 
murderer could be kept safe without being hurled out 
of life; others could be measurably deterred, at least, 

by a milder punishment; and yet the question of death- 
' sentences is not ended; for the main thing to be se- 
cured is moral impression, impression for law, and only 
some tremendous shock, it may be, can sufficiently do 
it. The mere deterring of crime is nothing, as com- 
pared with something done to make crime felt, or, what 
is nowise different, to make felt the sacredness of law 
as a power that shelters the world. And what shall do 
it but to sometimes see society forgetting all softness, 
and resolutely set on doing only damage, the last extreme 
of damage. So in this article of pain, God’s rectoral 
goodness works by damage. Pains are his silent thun- 
derbolts, shooting in the sense he has of law, and they 
are expected to consecrate law in men’s feeling the 
more powerfully, that his tenderly benignant nature 
breaks into such damage in them—just damage it is 
true, yet real, purposed damage. What an opinion of 
wrong and of law does he thus imprint on our feeling, 
by his seemingly strange work in the pains. Still we 
call him good, and have only the more tremendously 
deep sense of his goodness, that we find him good 


108 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


enough to sharpen these pungent woes of damage in our 
bodies. It is eternal tenderness, iron-clad for the right. 

3. It is another and very important moral effect of 
pain, that it softens the temperament, or temper, of souls 
under evil, and puts them in a different key. Thus it 
will be seen, that, in all cases of long-continued and 
very severe suffering, there is a look of gentled, per- 
haps we should say, broken, feeling. The gait is softer, 
the motions less abrupt, and there is a lingering moan 
we fancy in the voice, and a certain dewy tremor of tear 
intheeye. Itisasifthe man’s willfulness had been tem- 
pered down, or at least partly broken. He may be 
to us a stranger, yet we see by all his demonstrations 
that he has come out of the fire, and is tempered to the 
sway of many things he can not resist. Thus it is that 
a great many of the best and holiest examples of piety 
are such as have been tried and finished in the crucible 
of suffering. Or, if we speak of the race at large, how 
very often, and how far, are they tempered to the sway 
of duty by the fact, or consciousness, that they have not 
been and can not be superior to pain. Had we all been 
trained in a condition of perfect immunity from it, how 
intractable and wild in comparison should we be—even 
like those millennial monsters of will and lust that 
lived before the flood. They had great advantages over 
us, no doubt, in their healthiness and the immense ti- 
tanic vigor of their constitutions, but ten times as many 
pains with one-tenth as many years, would have been 
a far better endowment. Have we not a little more to 
say of the respectability of good health, than the sober 


OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 108 


est and deepest observation will justify? Good health 
in evil is not specially respectable, and we see by the 
multitudes of pains God puts upon us, that his opinion 
of it is abundantly qualified. 

* 4, It appears to have been necessary for the best ef- 
fect of pain, that it should be a liability of the whole 
mundane system, and be, in that manner, a kind of 
general sacrament for the world. It might have been 
confined to human beings, and to them who have be- 
come old enough to be responsible, and to be responsi- 
ble in just such a degree as matches their sin, but no 
such limitation is observed. It is put upon the harmless, 
unoffending age of infancy. It is the lot of all animate 
creatures without exception, for whatever lives must die, 
and whatever dies must be subject to pain. Many vege- 
table growths give tokens of sensibility, which supposes 
a liability to pain—and if they all, as a class, are ex- 
empt, they compose about the only class of substances 
that are wholly clear of the sad implication ; for the very 
rocks of the world, as already suggested, are monuments 
of buried pain, themselves also racked and contorted, as 
if meant to be lithograph types of the general anguish. 
The meaning is, plainly enough, that pain shall set up its 
flag on the world, and by some mysterious right claim 
ownership, 

Now, it is of this that we are specially ready to com. 
plain. If only the guilty were required to suffer, we 
could justify it, but why should this bad liability be laid 
upon the poor animals, who have done no wrong to 
make it just? We are not satisfied, we sometimes say, 


110 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


and can not make it seem worthy of a good being. A 
great many strike out straightway into atheism, for they 
say that, in this pain of animals, it is proved beyond 
dispute than no principle of right, or of just moral dis 
tribution, governs the world—only fateful chance, or, 
what is more exact in this case, fateful mischance casts 
the die for pain. Moral government is out of the ques- 
‘tion, for what can a moral governor be doing in such 
plain violation of right? The argument here is a large 
one, that can not be exhausted in our present restrieted 
limits; but three points duly observed will not only 
clear the bad impeachment, but reveal the fact of a 
grand, far-reaching positive benefit, without which the 
moral uses of the world would even be incomplete. 
First observe that a great part of the suffering of ani- 
mals, just that part which most offends our feeling, is 
caused by the abuse and cruelty of man, and that there 
is no more reason to accuse the right of Providence in 
allowing man to injure the animals, than there is in 
allowing him to injure and cruelly torment his fellow- 
man. By the supposition he is to act morally, and 
then if, using that liberty, he will do wrong, somebody 
—animals, or men, or both—must suffer the wrong 
done. The very scheme of morality and responsible 
action implies a power to create suffering, and just so 
far a liability to suffer. Only in one of two ways, 
therefore, could this liability of animals to suffer be 
avoided; either man must have no moral liberty, or 
else he must have no animals. In the former case he 
would not be a man morally—capable «f character; in 


OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 111 


the latter he would not be a man bodily—capable of 
life; for it is a matter of doubt whether he could even 
live without their fertilizing and co-operative aid. 
Next observe that animals are things, and not in any 
such relation to God as to have a moral right against 
pain. They have no moral ideas, and can not be mor 
ally wounded. It is only we that are morally wounded 
when they are cruelly treated—what they suffer is only 
so much of physical subtraction from their comfort. In 
this view nothing more appears to be required, in respect 
to their existence, than that they should have some fit 
benefit, or advantage in it. If they are made to suffer 
some pain, wholly irrespective of their own desert, it must 
not be forgotten that, morally speaking, they have no 
desert, and are nowise conscious of any. They are so 
far furniture only, and furniture is not in court for the 
redress of its abuses. Besides, if they are sometimes 
abused, how much oftener are they provided for, labored 
for, and served by whole months of drudgery—no herd 
or flock ever suffering for its owner a thousandth part 
of what he suffers for them. They have their pains and 
distresses too, apart from all abuse, and if they have 
them still, under the solidarity principle that links their 
fortunes with his, is it not that he may let forth his sym- 
pathies more tenderly toward them, and give them as 
great benefit as he receives at their cost? And if he 
finds them fellow-partners with him, suffering innocently 
with him in his lot, they will less need comfort than he, 
and will only show, by their clinging still to life, that 
they have comfort enough, in having it valuable as it ia 


112 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


Thirdly, the fact that all the world is made to follow 
the fortunes of man and, in some sense, go down with 
him and groan with him in his evil, is a fact that car- 
ries with it an immense power of moral benefit. No 
matter if the pains are initiated long ages before his 
arrival, still they are just as truly for him and from him 
as if they had come after, and had come of being sim- 
ply horror-smitten with him by his wrong. He is 
finally to have the general lordship, and a vast, all- 
ruling sympathy fills and configures the world to his 
fortunes; so that what he is to be and want in himself, » 
he shall see in the creatures that have sad company 
with him. The poor animals, looking up to him in their 
sorrow, are to say, “ We are with you, only we ask some 
tender recognition of our suffering for you.” And what 
can have a more subduing effect on his feeling than to 
see the mute creation groaning with him—types of pain 
filling all tiers and orders of substance up to the stars, 
and holding forth their mirror to his pity. This grand 
sacrament of pain is ever with him, saying, “ This is my 
body that you have broken.” I do not say that we are put- 
ting the matter always in this form. It may even seem to 
have more of fancy in it than of fact. I only mean to say 
that the world is so tempered to us, when we think not 
of it, bearing a look of sympathy, suffering common dis- 
aster and judgment with us, provoking tenderness by ita 
broken fortunes and forlorn appeals. How much better 
it is for us than a world all bright and smiling and pain- 
less would be, it will be difficult for us even to conceive. 

I have spoken thus largely of the pains of animals, be 


OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 113 


cause theimpeachment of Providence on accoun of them 
is so very common, and so very unjust. They are even 
a necessary part of God’s moral economy, as we can 
easily see. Only it remains to be added that, when all 
cruelty to animals is done away, and we learn to have 
them in due care and tenderness, yielding them true 
sympathy, as partakers in our sad fortunes, they will 
yield us lessons of benefit more and more touching, and 
closer to the fineness of a genuinely perfected character. 

The pains of infancy have their uses and solutions in 
much the same manner. These we can see are even 
physiologically derived to them by inheritance, and it 
is not to be doubted that immense moral benefits will 
accrue to them forever after, from the pains they suf- 
fered in their innocence here, whether for a longer or a 
shorter time. And how powerful is their mute appeal 
to natural affection, when looking up in their moments 
of distress, they seem to ask imploringly—‘‘ Who is it? 
whence and why does it come?” The pitying mother 
had perhaps never any such thought as that her own 
liabilities include both her and her child, and yet the 
pang that comes back from her child has a moral vigor 
somehow in it that she feels in tenderly remorseful, 
persuasively bitter compunction. 

5. It is a very important use of pain, that it prepares 
some of the highest possibilities and most fruitful occa- 
sions of character. It never misses observation that 
pain is the pungent educator of that sturdiest and most 
sublime virtue, fortitude. Danger is the educator of 
courage, a” ain of this other twin principle, not infe- 


toe 


414 MORAL USES DF DARK THINGS. 


rior; and between them both God finds motive enough 
to justify much terrible severity of schooling. To bear, 
and dare—these two great lessons are among the chief 
moral uses of life; and, if he could not give them, he 
would think it better for us and a more true honor that 
we be excused from living altogether. If we could neither 
be martyrs, nor heroes, the highest inspirations would be 
needless, and nothing would be left us but to earn the 
common rewards of duty by common drudgeries in it. 
Sympathy, also, and all the virtues fitly called graces, 
that keep it company, and all the works by which it 
ministers, begin at the fact of pain. Even animals will 
rush to one of their kind who is howling for some ter- 
ror, or moaning for some present distress. And this 
natural kind of sympathy, based in mere instinct, be- 
comes charity in the higher plane of Christian feeling 
and sacrifice. Therefore, when Christ came into the 
world, the world’s pains first of all took hold of him. 
At that point his sacrifice began, and there all sacrifice 
begins. God might reveal his bounty. by bounty be- 
stowed, and so far might reveal his love; but there 
would not be much meaning in the love, if it did not 
come to pain and minister in sacrifice to it. _Nay, it 
can be worthily and fitly revealed only as it comes 
through pain, and bears the burden of pain. And it 
will not even be revealed by that, save when it bears 
the inflictions of wrong, for the benefit of wrong-doers 
and enemies themselves. Pain, therefore, is the pos 
sibility of all that lies in sacrifice, because it is the 
possibility of disinterested sympathy, and so of all self- 


OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 116 


eacrifice. No world that God has made pught ever to 
want redemption ; but if it does, there ought to be and 
must be a vast comprehension of pain let down upon it. 
It need not crucify, but it will, and since it will, the 
love that bears so much of enemies will best reach it. 
And so there is launched upon us, in Christ’s descent 
to the world, his miracles of healing, his words of com 
fort to creatures in sorrow, his suffering of death at the 
hands of his enemies—all included in the one word 
sacrifice—the full out-beaming fact of the love of God. 
And in the same manner, under the same conditions, 
we ourselves are to be fashioned and perfected in the 
graces of the divine love, by the burdens we bear and 
the sacrifices we support, whether for other men’s 
pains, or the pains they inflict upon us. 

The very comforting conclusion to which we are 
brought by these inquiries is, that pain, which seems to 
be no truth, and as far as teaching is concerned, quite 
meaningless to thought, is yet no barren evil. It is 
wholly mute, felt only in some hidden center of flesh 
or bone, giving no lectures, forming no arguments or 
propositions, pointing no definite reproofs, and yet 
there is nothing in all our experience, that changes so 
many aspects of things, and is so grandly productive, 
so fertile in good. After all, there is no unreason which 
it does not somehow contrive to correct, no right argu- 
ment which it does not uphold, no lesson which it does 
not find how to give, no temper which it does not in- 
cline to the truth. It is God’s mute prophet in the 
body, giving there its mighty, silent oracles to the soul. 


116 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


We sometimes shudder at the extremities of agony we 
see, and ask how it is possible for a good being to sharpen 
such pangs in a creature bearing his image, but the true 
solction is that he is good enough to do it and not spare, 
faithful enough to work out his problem of character, by 
such painful kind of surgery. If we shudder still before 
him, it is the tremendous benignity and sovereign fer- 
tility of his working that we shudder at. Far better is it 
and worthier, to confide and acquiesce ; for he is only the 
higher in good that he can be appallingly good. 

The great practical matter, the point whither we are 
come, and where we may sit down, is that finding how 
to suffer well is a thing to be much studied and faith- 
fully learned. Passivity is not the true lesson; for a 
bulrush bowing to the wind could take that lesson as 
well; neither is it to brace up all our force in a tough 
strain of stoical energy, refusing to feel; but it is to set 
our whole activity quietly, manfully, down upon the 
having well learned what our fiery teacher will show 
us. To wade through months of pain, to spin out years 
of weariness and storm, can be done triumphantly only 
by such as can resolutely welcome the discipline their 
nature wants. And the man or woman who has learned 
to suffer well has gotten the highest of mortal victories. 
Great works are often romantic because of their magni- 
tude, and the fleshly nature itself, kindled with en- 
thusiasm, bears up the undertaker and keeps his vigor 
good; but in the long-drawn months or years of inev 
‘table pain, where there is no castle without to be car- 
ried as by storm, but only a dull blind nature to be 


OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 117 


fertilized within—there to ho!d a placid mind, a:id to 
keep firm grapple with the agony, is to be equal to a 
great occasion, as few men ever can be. And if God 
by any severity of discipline can bring us up to this 
pitch of heroical suffering, he will have made as much 
of our human nature as it is capable of becoming. 

It will be permitted, in closing this article, to suggest 
that our natural theologians, in their argument from 
mature for the goodness of God, commonly, if not 
always, fall into a large mistake. Their plan or pre- 
scribed sphere of argument very nearly compels it. 
The problem is to prove the required fact out of nature 
itself, and without going above the range of her mere 
physical appointments. They are shut down thus 
below the range of moral ideas, and away from all ends 
of moral and religious discipline. Whether so un- 
derstanding their problem or not, they do, in fact, en- 
deavor to make out a goodness that consists in providing 
means of happiness, comforts, bounties, delectations, 
pleasures, feedings for waste, lubrications for friction, 
sleep for exhaustion, healings for wounds, and the like. 
Physical arrangements for physical ends compose the 
staple of their argument. How little they can make 
of pain in this manner is evident. They can show that 
there are sentinels in our bodies to keep us away 
from pain, doing it by smaller twinges of pain. They 
can show, perhaps, that we have a great deal more 
pleasure than pain, and so make out a balance for 
the divine goodness; as if it stood in casting a bal- 
ance between what God gives and what God fails to 


118 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


give. They can challenge any one to show, on the 
contrary, that any single thing is made to create 
pain, or any single member to ache, no matter what 
pains or aches may actually come. Be all this as 
it may, there is abundance of pain which omnipotence 
might certainly avert. Besides it is damage, indiver- 
tibly sent, coming visibly by no mistake, and compre- 
hending all sentient creatures from the highest to the 
lowest. The whole creation is put groaning and trav- 
ailing together in it. Taking the world then as a 
machine contrived for happy sensation, or for mere 
economic uses, it is plainly a most absurd failure; no 
machine invented by man was ever kept in use under 
such failure. To say that such broad seas of suffering 
rolling over the world are mischances not preventable, 
is about as sore an impeachment of the divine capacity, 
as it could be of the divine intention to say that they 
are meant with no concern beyond the damage created. 

Besides, if the argument for goodness were made out 
thus in terms of mere physical computation, it would 
only show that God is concerned to have us fare well 
or happily, in the plane of physical experience. He 
would be good as being in good nature, or, at most, as 
being morally engaged to keep us in comfort. But this 
is not the goodness of God, or any but a very faint ap- 
proximation. There is truly but one kind of moral 
goodness, and it is the same in all moral beings, the 
created ard the uncreated. But in every grade of 
being, it wiil require acts and works, and demonstrations 
according to its rank or quality, or office. Moral 


OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 119 


goodness in mere subjects will be summed up m ohedi- 
ence or duty. But as certainly as it rules in God, it 
will make him a Ruler, even as he is elected to be by 
his own everlasting supereminence and capacity. And 
so, in him, it will be rectoral goodness. And then, as 
acts of damage by us to wrong-doers would be sin, so 
they may even be required of him, because he is in 
government, as we arenot. If he can not minister pain 
therefore, he can not rule, and can not be good enough 
to fill his supreme office. But if he can, if with all 
paternities, all tenderest, most personal love ia his feel- 
ing, he still can be so faithful in rule as to bend himself 
to the instigations of pain, passing his own nature 
through a kind of Gethsemane of revulsion to do it, 
that in him is Rectoral Goodness—nothing short of 
which is really divine. The kind of goodness therefore 
attempted so generally by our natural theologians 
would not be the goodness of God, and he would not 
be set in godship by it. To be good for him, is to be 
rectorally good; that is, to be capable of majesty, 
capable of wielding and ministering pain, and faithful 
enough to do it. And so it is that by this fact of pain, 
we arrive at the only sufficient discovery of the good- 
ness of God. He could not be more tenderly close to us 
or more adorably great, than he is in this most earnest 
way of fidelity. Probably every physical pain we suffer 
is to him a moral pain, that would to us be manifold 
heavier. Let us have some proof then of his goodness 
that makes him good enough to bear the sword and be 
God, good enough to rule in the grand fidelities of pain, 


VL 


OF FHYSICAL DANGER. 


Ir must strike al:nost any person, at times, as a thing 
paradoxically strange, that in the realm of God, a being 
confessedly good above all measure and degree, there 
should be a feeling of insecurity or apprehensiveness so 
nearly universal; as if unknown dangers were lurking 
for us everywhere, and perils waiting for the spring. 
Had any man his house full of guests, accepted each in 
trust by his hospitality, and were they all the while in 
visible concern for their safety—haunted by strange 
noises in the night, flitting about the halls, whispering 
and gesticulating at the doors of their chambers, set- 
ting watches in the corridors and stairways, sometimes 
breaking into panic and rushing out into the street, talk- — 
ing always in a manner of concern when together, and 
when they go abroad telling everywhere the dreadful 
apprehensions they live in—he would certainly take it 
as a sore affront or cruel impeachment. And yet there 
is no phase of mortal sentiment in the world so preva- 
lent, or so nearly universal, as that apprehensiveness 
which we name by the word danger. Weareall upon the 
watch for it, ready to catch the least intimation of it, 
ready sometimes to be rushed into any wildest panic to 


OF PHYSICAL DANGER. 121 


escape it; a condition of things, we may see at « glance, 
in which it is clear that God has us in discipline and 
not in hospitality. Enough, too, that the discipline is 
salutary, however little complimentary to himself. 
All the more impressive, too, is his fidelity, that he has 
even made an institute of danger, and set it in the 
very cast of his mundane economy. Let us see if we 
can discover the benefit he intends for us in it. 

There is nothing so indubitably real as danger, and 
yet there is nothing more difficult if we attempt to de- 
fine it. Thus if it is evil actually coming or to come, 
then it is fact; and if it is evil not coming, as in fact, 
then there is no danger of its coming; so that fact or no 
fact is the whole matter, and the danger is nothing. 
No, it is not the whole: we may be ignorant enough to 
be concerned lest the evil thought of may be coming, 
when we do not know that it actually is or actually is 
not, and our unknowingness will itself keep us in the 
sense of danger. Strictly speaking, danger is subject- 
ive only ; save that we certainly know there are causes 
at work in great power, a little way back of our igno- 
rance, that make our apprehensive feeling rational. 
And it is these apprehensive torments of unknowing- 
ness that we call danger. God is doing facts and we 
are thinking dangers; and his facts, considering that we 
can know so little what they are to be, suffice to keep 
us, and are meant to keep us, in a mood of apprehen- 
siveness—all the while conversant with danger. 

Consider a moment how this feeling of danger is in- 
stigated, or by how many factors working together i’ is 

6 


122 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


kept i1 wakeful sensibility. (1.) We are in wrorg, 
and therefore tempered apprehensively, looking every 
way after some evil to come, such as we consciously de- 
serve. A sound is in our ears when there is no sound ; 

we flee when no man pursueth. (2.) We are ignorant, 
‘ and ignorance under evil is even more apprehensive 
than knowledge, raising more ghosts often than there 
are facts of retribution. (3.) There are terrible powers 
working with terrible energy about us; and we know 
that when they overtake us, or we fall in their way, 
they will not spare. They work by laws, and laws we 
understand will never be adjourned or moved aside for 
our accommodation. They are lictors all of retribution; 
and the danger is not that they will possibly, or by 
some mischance, fall in our way, but that they are actu- 
ally on our track, and will certainly overtake us shortly. 
And furthermore, (4.) there are grounds of distrust 
and concern secreted everywhere, so to speak, in the 
world’s bosom, on purpose apparently to keep us to our 
caution, and forbid our possible security—mirages in 
the air, poisons in woods and flowers, green-covered 
morasses and quicksand bottoms that will drop us down 
out of sight, if we trust a foot on them; atmospheric 
breathings of ague, miasmatic infections and hidden 
death-plagues burdening the night; horses that have 
death in their heels, tigers ravening in the wood, roar- 
ing lions that frighten us by their noise, and lions more 
terrible because they are silent, roaring not at all. We 
are the more fearful, too, sometimes, that we may not 
get time to fear; as when some lightning-stroke may 


OF PHYSICAL DANGER. 123 


get beforehand with us, or when some earthquake 
shudder—only one—may topple down our house «or 
city upon us. Or, what is more appalling than either 
lightning or earthquake, a few drops too many of blood 
may rush upon our brain, or the heart may burst and 
send no blood at all. Three-quarters of the life-and- 
death processes, going on by the hundred in our bodies, 
are steered, or separated, only by films a little more 
tender and thinner than gauze. Every thing in us and 
about us is arranged to keep us in a danger-element and 
make us somehow alive and apprehensive to evil. And 
it is not weakness that is appealed to but it is reason— 
all the rational capacities we possess. If it is in one 
view an appeal to ignorance, what higher, better, wiser 
function has reason than the making due account and 
the keeping due care of ignorance-—requiring it, in fact, 
of ignorance to be apprehensive, just because it can not 
see ? 

Reverting at this point to our supposed case of hospi- 
tality, we see at once how far off such a supposition may 
be. Itis not as guests that we are being entertained 
and kept ; we are not accepted as in trust at all, not shel- 
tered and castled by our Responsible Host, not expected 
to be inapprehensive and secure ; but on the contrary, it 
is clearly his fixed design to put us into life as an ele- 
ment of danger, and keep us, doubtless for some moral 
purpose, in a condition of unrest and more or less pain- 
ful concern. What that moral purpose may be we 
need not be greatly ata loss to discover. 

1. There is no better way to put us on the care of 


124 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


ourselves morally, than to make the physical care of 
our body and life the first lesson of our experience. 
And this is done most effectively by the crowding of ° 
all sorts of perils about us, from our childhood onward. 
In the moral life there is no government but self-goy- 
ernment, no conservation but self-conservation. Things 
are governed and conserved by their laws; but men, 
moral agents, are conservable not by moral laws, but 
only by their own free choice under such laws, in a 
way of obedience. And the peril here is great—not 
in respect of the laws, but in respect of the choices. 
Every thought, inclining, predisposition, all ends de- 
sired, motivities played with, parleys and parliaments 
held in the soul’s chambers, make up an element of 
danger. All the more beautiful is it that God begins, 
at the earliest possible moment, to put us on keeping 
due care of ourselves. He sets us down among physi- 
cal dangers, where our first puttings forth are to be for 
our safety. The first thing learned by the child is that 
Nature goes her own way by herself, and does not con- 
sider or pity or spare. There is no motherly concern 
for him, he finds, in the fire, none in the water, none 
in the hard floor. After a few scorches and physical 
mishaps, he becomes apprehensive, and takes his body 
into such care as the danger-lesson has taught him— 
balancing himself cautiously as he tottles on his feet; 
standing off from the fire, as if the fire might be com- 
ing forth after him; scanning with timorous cireum- 
spection the look and approach of the animals, lest per- 
chance they mean some injury. And then as the life 


OF PHYSICAL DANGER. 125 


lesson begins, so it goes on afterward. Made acquainted 
with danger by his first experiences, danger goes with 
- him and keeps him faithful company. He stands in 
some kind of jeopardy every hour. Perils of all sorts 
and sizes lurk for him in things most common; the 
pestilence walketh in darkness when he sleeps; m 
business and travel, fire and water and wind serve him 
with appalling threats; in his medicine there may be 
death, in his food ingredients more fatal than gun- 
powder. And so, brewing always in his danger- 
element, from childhood onward, he learns to be, in 
his very habit, a prudent, foreseeing creature; and 
being thus inducted into the care of himself, as respects 
the life and life-interests of his body, it is also to be 
seen whether he will take up, in like faithful caution, 
a right self-care of his moral and responsible nature. 
To see the benefit and profoundly wise purpose of 
God in such a scheme of experience, we have only to 
suppose that our life had been set on a footing of per- 
fect, inviolable security ; that every power of nature 
had been cushioned, so to speak, so as never to give a 
blow; that the fires had been softened by infusions of 
dew, and the snows by mixtures of wool; that the 
lightnings had brought their conductors with them, 
and the thunders sung their explosions on Molian 
harps: in a word, that no living man ever scented the 
possibility of danger, or even conceived what it is. 
How totally unprepared is he thus for any thing which 
can be called responsibility. He does nct even know 
what a critical thing is, much less how to take care of 


126 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


himself in a matter as critical as duty, under a peril as 
momentous as the retributions of immortal wrong. 
What care has he for any of God’s commandments, — 
when no single touch of disaster has ever wakened a 
feeling of concern for any thing in his bosom? What 
signifies responsibility, when he knows only self-indul- 
gence and security ; when simply to be dandled in the 
world-mother lap has been the whole matter of his 
experience? What can he think of caution, or pre- 
caution as against any kind of evil, when as yet no 
pang or sting or blow has ever come nigh enough to 
startle apprehension? He would go to sea as quietly 
in a leaky vessel as in a sound one, eat poison as un- 
concernedly as food, risk a tempest as he would a 
breeze, and fire as quietly as chloroform. A creature 
thus trained has plainly no one qualification for the 
exercise of that really sublime self-care, that belongs 
to a morally perilous and responsible state. He will 
have no more concern for his conduct than he has for 
his breathing, and will let one have its way as uncon- 
cernedly as the other. He is never attent to any thing; 
for it is only a life steering itself through dangers, and 
educated by them, that gets wakened to the stringently 
practical, manly state of attention. And what is this 
habit of attention but a first condition of all right 
keeping and conduct in the moral, as it is of all sound 
culture and development in the intellectual, life? But 
we go a stage deeper into this economy of danger— 

2. When we consider the tit relation it has to beings 
in a state of wrong and disobedience already begun, J 


OF PHYSICAL DANGER. 127 


speak here not so much of government, or of what is 
necessary to its maintenance—the retributive sanctions, 
or penal enforcements apart from which all law is only 
advice—but I prefer to set the point suggested directly 
before those instinctive sentiments of order and fitness 
that bear sway in the moral judgments of the race. 
Saying nothing of law thus, or of what is needed to 
maintain it, we do yet, as by some inborn sentiment of 
justice, require the state of wrong to be a state of dis- 
turbance. We pronounce it a thing unfit and mon- 
strous for peace to be joined to evil, and we forbid the 
bans. Nothing satisfies us but to have evil-doing 
linked to evil expectancy and fear. When sin mounts 
the chariot, we require that danger shall have a seat 
with it; nay, that, as often as it will, it shall drive. 
We assume, as by a kind of universal instinct, that 
wrong of every sort shall have fear and jeopardy for 
its element ; and if we supposed we had gods lurking 
anywhere, that could have it for their art to give quiet 
to wrong, we should sooner pluck down their images 
than pay them worship. 

Furthermore, it is a consideration more impressive 
still, that wrong itself maintains the same opinion— 
demanding for itself all which it can most bitterly fear, 
invoking, so to speak, the evils it deserves, challenging 
unknown terrors, and feeling itself quite unsphered, 
when it is not in its element of danger. Sometimes 
bad men or great criminals get hardened, as we speak, 
and seem to be quite clear of all misgivings; but we 
only mean by this that they have become apathetic to 


128 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 


dauger, not that they have discovered the non-existence 
of it. Even such would deem it a thing most horrible, 
if they were assured that wrong has no more any thing 
to fear. And if there were declared to be a God on 
high, dispensing equally to evil and to good, and as 
much concerned to shelter one as the other, they would 
recoil from his worship even as from sacrifice to Ahri- 
man or Siva. 

So fixed—so unalterably, universally fixed—are we 
in the opinion, that a bad world, occupied by souls 
under evil, must be haunted everywhere by danger, 
and can not be dissociated from it. There is no miscon- 
junction so absurd as that of safety and wrong, becanse 
it is a moral misconjunction, showing our mortal state 
itself to be out of joint, even down to its lowest foun- 
dations; a jargon, a chaos, held by no fixed principles, 
settled by no terms of order. God’s world is a world 
out of character, all government apart, and as there 
is no quality of fitness in it, so there is nothing good 
to come of it. Most vain it will be to look for any 
kind of moral uses in it; for it could not be more 
clear that moral ideas themselves have nothing to do 
with it. 

But this appeal to universal judgment in the race 
cannot, after all, be held as apart from government, or 
from what is necessary to the fit maintenance of gov- 
ernment. We believe in government as universally as 
in any thing else, and in penal sanctions as the due 
enforcements of government. And a great part of the 
abhorrence we feel, as of something monstrous in the 


OF PHYSICAL DANGER. 129 


state of misconjurction that marries wrong to safety, 
is due to the implied want of government.. Our feel- 
ing is that right is mocked by the loss of its defenses. 
What worse thing or more dreadful can be said of any 
civil state or body politic, than that evil-doers are at 
peace in it, having never any thing to fear. Is this 
government, we say, that is keeping all crime fearless? 
which permits the robber to show us our money in his 
purse, and langh at us? which guarantees the mur- 
derer, when he stalks defiantly by and before the wife 
and children of his victim? Immunity in crime—what 
can be more horrible? We require instead that it shall 
be found either suffering or flying. If the fangs of 
punishment are not actually fastened upon it, then it 
must be only that the dogs of justice in pursuit have 
not yet overtaken it. Andso of all government. If 
God has any government, it will be right for him to 
make all crime unsafe. That feeling of misconjunc- 
tion, of which I have been speaking as a universal 
sentiment, is after all more than a sentiment; the 
offense we suffer in it is not «sthetical merely, but 
profoundly practical, requiring penalties to be as strong 
as sins, and as universally present. It is nothing, in 
short, but our fixed opinion that God ought to govern 
his world, and that, if he does, dangers will be frown- 
ing in it as many as the wrongs to be redressed, 
Speculate as we may, we have none of us any practical 
difficulty, after all, with penalties and penal terrors in 
God’s realm. We should only be revolted if there 
were none. It would be as if eternal mockery and 
6* 


130 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 


misconjunction had taken away, not government only, 
but the distinctions of conduct and character. 

3. It is a point still further in advance, that nothing 
done for the recovery of minds under eyil can have any 
chance of success, which does not weaken their confi- 
dence by impressions of insecurity and tokens of dan- 
ger. It is not enough that, being in evil, fears spring 
up in prophetic menace from within. To obtain due 
point and emphasis, that menace wants to be seconded 
by appalling correspondences of fact without. If the 
conscience, violated by wrong, utters sentence against 
itself, there needs to be also a kind of conscience with- 
out in things visible—a remorse frowning in the sky, 
and driving its black tempests across in crashing thun- 
der and hail; throes of wrath shuddering underground 
and bursting up in flame. The world itself, in short, 
needs to be a bad conscience physically represented. If 
there be immutable law for the right, it must, when 
trampled, be immutable law as an avenger; powers 
ordained for comfort and blessing must be working 
disaster; perils must look out from behind objects of 
beauty ; sleep must be scared by shapes of terror flit- 
ting across the brain. All the soul’s remorseful judg- 
ments require to be seconded and set home by the 
executive preparations of justice. Who will care to be 
delivered from evil when he sees, in fact, no fiery and 
bad portent, and no terror of misgiving is felt in his 
eonfidence ? 

But this we shall be told is fear, and what place for 
fear can there be among the motives to good? Is it 


OF PHYSICAL DANGER. 131 


true reformation to be afraid? Is it obedience to be 
driven a-field in duty by the dogs of terror? Do we 
call it homage to God that we give him up our self- 
possession, to serve him as in panic or compulsion? It 
takes but a very little of this cheap sort of argument to 
raise a considerable show of philosophy for the point 
of question or denial made; though, if it were a single 
degree weaker, and more flashy, it would even miss the 
repute of sophistry. Probably the casuists most for- 
ward in it will resolve all virtue by the law of self- 
interest ; and what is fear but a consideration of self-in- 
terest. Or they will be such as look for a general and 
complete expurgation of character in the future life, by 
long ages of pain there to be endured; and what again 
is fear but the foreshadow, or fore-sentiment, of pain? 
and how does pain appear to be a motive at all worthier 
and nobler than fear? Just this, in fact, is the princi- 
pal office of pain, or suffering, as one of our terms of 
discipline, that it prepares to apprehensiveness, so to the 
avoidance of wrong. Pride might be willing to shake 
off fear, but it can not shake off pain; and that once 
entered, opens the sense of danger, never again to be 
shut. The sense of pain initiates the sense of danger, and 
so, by a kind of Cxsarean way, the birth of souls into 
good is made possible. The true conception to be held is 
simply this: that the argument of fear or danger or felt 
insecurity is only a preparatory or first-stage argument, 
never a proximate or properly integral argument for 
duty. It simply enforces consideration where there is 
none, and then consideration is to bring on choice and 


132 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


settle it in new dispositions, by other and higher mo 
tivities; to bring up truth and love and beauty, and 
God as their all-containing spring, that they may have 
their captivating power in their own excellence, and be 
embraced in everlasting homage for what they are— 
possible never to be really embraced for any thing else. 

And why should there be any so great jealousy of 
fear as a check to heedlessness and bad living, and as a 
cautionary motive to the consideration of duty? Is it 
weak to be alive and thoroughly attent to evils about 
our path? Who is more distinctively wise than the 
man who can be cautious enough to foresee dangers, 
provide a way of safety through them, and maintain, as 
it were, in this great sea of perils, a firmly balanced 
prudence? Whao, in fact, do we all agree to consider 
more incurably doltish and thick-headed than the man 
who can not see any thunderbolt of danger before it 
strikes him, and then can not see it afterward because 
it has struck him? What is fear, in this view, but one of 
the best functions of intelligence? And when we take 
note of the faet that every human being is organized for 
the apprehension of danger and pain, the whole skin 
woven through with nerves of sensibility, to keep it 
apprised of damage from exposures to fire and frost and 
violence; the eye made quick to apprehend and shut 
its gates against every sort of invasion; the very fin- 
gers’-ends reticulated with nerves of touch, to make 
them sensitive to the approaches of pain—when, I say, 
we note this tempering of the whole body to a mood of 
precaution, or of quickened sensibility to danger, shall 


OF PHYSICAL DANGER, 133 


we take it as the Creator’s plan to make us weak, 
organize us into weakness, humble as to a pitiful 
dejected way of living under the sway of fear? Exactly 
contrary to this, he is making us quick to fear, that he 
may put us on our intelligence; train us to a nobler 
and more capable prudence; lift us into a wisdom 
more completely sovereign over the bad liabilities that 
beset us. 

And then, if we ask what is the verdict of conscious- 
ness in a right life thus initiated or enforced, we shall 
not find the subject humiliated by the reference he has 
had to prudential motives, or the beginnings he has 
made under instigations of peril. The prudentials he 
began with are now for the most part left behind, and 
their temporary uses are so far ended, and he is only 
the more exalted in his consciousness that, beginning 
at a point of mere self-interest, where and wherewithal 
it was only possible to begin, he is now rising out of his 
danger-element into personal majesty above himself— 
conquering and casting out, and even forgetting, his 
fear, in that glorious liberty that springs from the 
supreme love of the good for its own sake. All these 
lower moods of the mind, therefore—apprehensiveness, 
fear, danger, concern—have moral uses to serve of the 
highest consequence and dignity, and the world is 
wisely ordered to keep them in their proper activity. 

4, There are yet two points to be named where the 
institute of danger fulfills uses more direct or immedi- 
ate, in training all character up—moral as natural, and 
natural as moral—to its highest culminations of honor 


134 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


and respect. I refer to the two attributes of personas 
power and personal courage unfolded by it, or by 
means of it. 

About the highest exhibition of power obtained or 
obtainable by man is discovered in the command or 
sovereign mind-grapple he learns how to maintain over 
causes infinitely above him, as respects their physical 
efficiency. He is not only not cowed before the tre- 
mendous forces of the creation of God, but he steals 
their secret, and by means of it he actually takes them 
into service. And in doing it he is often moved by the 
stimulation of danger, going directly into the chambers 
where the danger lurks, and working in close precinct 
with it. His most striking contrivances, combinations, 
tools, machines, operations, discoveries, are ways found 
~ out by his intelligence for keeping at bay, or reducing 
to subserviency, forces that would otherwise crush him. 
As he must go mining underground, in halls that are 
filled with combustible, explosive gas, he learns by a 
little experiment how to fence about his light with a 
fine wire-gauze, when he has a safety-lamp that com- 
mands the gas to be harmless; and walking there 
underground, through the valley of the shadow of 
death, with it in hand, he fears no evil. Beset by a 
dreadful plague, that breathes infection round him year 
by year, carrying off a third part of the world’s chil- 
dren, he learns to steal a poison from one of his domes- 
ticated animals, and, vaccinated with a touch of this, 
he goes, and lets them go, directly into the bad expo- 
sure, doing it as securely as if the plague-infection were 


OF PHYSICAL DANGER. 135 


wholly at his bidding. The wild, half-demoniacal ter- 
rors of alchemy attract his search instead of repelling 
it, and chemistry is the result. The sea is a terrible 
devouring element, and the mariner goes coasting cau- 
tiously along the frightful shores for long ages, fearing 
not only the rocks and winds, but vastly more that he 
shall wander into unknown regions, and be never able 
to find where he is, or by what course to reach his - 
home. By and by it is discovered, by explorative 
genius groping far away among the stars, that by angle 
and distance and calculated tables and observations, 
the random ship that was can find her place, at almost 
any time, within a mile, and set her course with relia- 
ble precision for any country or harbor on the globe. 
The sea again he finds a yawning gulf between him and 
the world; he searches it out with his mind as the fishes 
can not with their fins, maps the still bottom, draws his 
wire along it, and then sits down to think and talk 
serenely through three thousand miles of wave and 
storm. Still more sublime, because vastly more com- 
plex, is that wonderful combination of study and expe- 
rience by which human society learns to organize itself 
in law and government, so as to keep in safe control 
those worst infestations of danger that are created by 
social wrong and passion. The problem is, how to dis- 
tribute selfishness and set bad power in balance, so as 
to keep it safe in the maintenance of order and justice. 
A very cheap, small thing it is to make out navigation 
tables, even though we go to the stars for our data; but 
to make out safe navigations for society, and steer the 


136 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


ark of liberty through the perilous seas of wrong and 
passion—this, alas! is an art that comes more slowly; 
and yet it comes! We shall have it by and by, the 
world over. And yet all these and other puttings forth 
of skill and adaptive discovery, in the nature-field of 
our life, are only types of that vastly higher and more 
qualified intelligence by which we are to get the worlds 
of spirit and, religion into our command, and bring the 
powers of the world to come into our service. In its 
highest view, the great problem of religion, it is true, 
is not safety, but righteousness—how to be right witk 
God; how a soul in evil may come up out of evil inte 
God’s acceptance and friendship, as being co-ordinate 
with him in character. And yet the first impulse to 
this is the felt insecurity of evil, set home and seconded 
by all the perils of time. From that humble beginning 
the soul is to get spring, and then, by its divine explo- 
rations of study, and faith, and sacrifice, it is to climb 
up into God’s eternity, appropriating all the grandest 
truths and powers and celestial navigations of his 
realms. Nowhere does he engineer so loftily and 
ascend to such a grade of intelligence as here. We 
have almost no conception of intelligence, what it can 
contrive, and seize, and command, till we follow it up 
hither into this diviner field. Think what we may of 
fear, and danger, and the weakness of all such initia- 
tions of motive, they do in fact prepare us to exactly 
that which is the crown of intelligence, and without 
which it has no crown. 

It only remains to speak now of the courage-prin- 


OF PHYSICAL DANGER. 137 


tiple, rising, as it does, out of the world’s perils and 
dangers, and made sovereign, as to fear, by the ascend- 
ency it conquers above them. Great courage—that 
which makes a hero—is, by general consent, one of the 
grandest and most eminent distinctions possible to 
man. Indeed, we are so eager to find heroes, and pay 
them a voluntary homage, that we sometimes overleap 
all terms of merit, and take up what are only mock 
examples. We commonly take our heroes from the 
fields of war, doing it clearly in the opinion that such 
kind of greatness may be fitly measured by the dangers 
encountered. And so far we are right—if only the 
commander whom we have taken for our hero was a 
leader, who himself was led by the inspiration of a 
great and worthy cause. But these are not the only 
heroes. Just as dangers fill the world, so all men and 
women too are called to act insome heroic part, and the 
plan of life itself is to make heroes, according to the 
nerve and resolute faith by which the fight of life’s 
trial is maintained. The mere infant learning to walk 
is taking a first lesson of courage, and how much the 
getting heart for such terrible adventure costs him you 
will see from the delight he shows in his victory. The 
boy that dares to be singular is finding how to be about 
as great a hero as if he were the leader of a battle. 
The man that makes a great investment, or opens a 
new trade on the other side of the world, wants great 
nerve, steadied by a firm confidence of right judgment, 
such as many wild-brained, accidental leaders in war 
never knew. All the great inventors, such as Watt, 


138 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


Fulton, Arkwright, and Bessemer, have to fight pitched 
battles against poverty, conspiracy, and only half suc- 
cess, and finally prevail because they are too great 
heroes to be mastered. Whether Wellington was more 
of a hero than the man last named is really doubtful. 
From certain discoveries in iron, he took the hint of a 
new possible art that has made him the Tubal Cain of 
his age. His partial failures, and the consequent loss 
of confidence he suffered, the beauty of his new com- 
binations, and the stake he made so heroically to re- 
trieve his loss, have made his name one of the grandest 
names of our time. It is as if he had turned all the 
railroads of this and all coming ages into steel, and 
built in steel a network arch of triumph that spans the 
circles of the world. So in all the engagements of 
life, the expeditions, adventures, travels, trades, and 
toils, there is some kind of peril to be mastered, some 
terrible risk or danger to be met, which none but a 
most real hero will have mettle enough to attempt; 
and then as a result he becomes a man as much 
manlier, as he had more to fear and more to conquer. 
And what kind of opinion does God indicate con- 
cerning man, when he sets him down here in death’s 
shadow, and hemming him about with every thing to 
be feared, charges him to get the sovereignty of all, by 
his wakeful prudence and his steadfast courage. It 
was here, as it would seem, that Job, considering the 
storms and perils invading him on every side, fell into 
so great maze and bewilderment. What kind of crea- 
ture does my God think me to be, that he hedges me 


OF PHYSICAL DANGER. 139 


about with so many terrors, and sets me contending 
with such wild seas? Am I something more than a 
man, oris it more to be a man than I have thought it 
tobe? “Am Ia sea, or a whale, that Thou settest a 
watch over me? Thou scarest me with dreams. Thou 
terrifiest me through visions. What is man that Thou 
shouldst magnify him, and that Thou shouldst set Thine 
heart upon him, and that Thou shouldst visit him every 
morning and try him every moment ?” 

Surely a creature nursed in such wild perils must 
be designed for some heroic standing and degree. It 
may not be necessary to suppose that he is either a sea 
or a whale; enough that he is a man; call him, if you 
please, a weak, frail creature; the more sublime is it 
that a creature so frail can find how to master powers 
so unequal, and assert himself in sovereignty over such 
dangers. Whoever has seen a storm on the ocean has 
been made to feel this truth, and probably in a manner 
that even seemed to be a discovery. The water flies 
into mist like dust upon a dusty road, filling the air 
and hiding the foreship from the sight; the ropes groan 
to the tempest with a deep shuddering sound; wave 
musters after wave, tossing the huge frame as a play- 
thing or a bubble, driving it up’ through summits and 
down through cataracts, sending it over with a lift 
and down with a shove and a shout—who shall say 
whither? Ah! man, what now is man? A reed, a 
straw, a helpless, powerless creature, drifting where 
God’s tempest wills, ready to sink as a fly, into just 
what gulf will open, there to be no more. But he 


{40 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


looks again, notes the commander at his post, watching 
the symptoms of the storm and the working of the 
ship. He is a slight-made, very diminished creature, a 
man; to the smallest of these waves he is nothing. 
But he has stuck a few chips together, and balanced a 
bit of wire on its center to guide him, and he is out 
here on this howling waste, a thousand miles from the 
rand, careering through the waves, and holding on his 
way, as securely as if they were !oaned to his service. 
And this, indeed, is man—a creattre deeper than this 
sea, and more sovereign, rising out of frailty into 
grandeur, and creating the sublimity that before was 
only possible by the conquest of his perils. So God 
tries him every moment, and so he is magnified. Hay- 
ing nothing to fear, and no rough perils to conquer, 
how contemptible in comparison the figure to which 
he would be left. 

By this time it must be sufficiently clear that our 
human world would be an amazingly stupid place, and 
life itself a wretchedly profitless experience, if there 
were no dangers in it. We should fall into wrong as 
it were by dozing; or if we say nothing of wrong, we 
should do the right idly and without heart, as if it were 
not fit to be done. We should not be timid, because 
we have nothing to fear; and as little should we be 
brave, because we have nothing to conquer. Weshould 
never be unfolded in that power and courage which are 
‘he real sublimities of character, but we should live in 
a low, mean key, and die of mediocrity and dullness. 
Our tempests would be lullabies, our rivers ropy and 


OF PHYSICAL DANGER. 141 


slow; our lightnings heat lightnings only; and death, 
throwing by his scythe, would come in gloves with 
narcotic vials. And then, being what we must, our 
heaven, if we are to have any, would be a society com- 
posed of dull, insignificant people. 


Vil. 


OF THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY 


As it appears to be a first principle in morality that 
every man shall be responsible for himself, it would 
really seem that we ought also to be started every man 
by himself; that is, separate and sole, a strictly indi- 
vidual nature, common with no other, implicated in no 
social liabilities that touch the character. And yet we 
have our very being, as a personality, inwoven with 
other personalities, and sometimes half consolidated 
with them. We exist by race, in families, under laws 
of inheritance, circulating derivative blood, and bear- 
ing qualities bred in and in, which as nearly amount to 
moral character as they well can, without our being 
answerable for them. And then, again, we are herded 
afterward, in schools, and guilds, and states, and 
churches; where we are taken by the common mo- 
tives, breathe the common atmosphere, and receive a 
common headship, under the leaders and more forward 
minds that express because they represent, and repre- 
sent because they express, the common life. And the 
result is that we get the stamp of our school, »r sect, or 
general body upon us, so visible, so legibly written, as 
to be distinguishable even by a stranger, The young 


OF THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY. 143 


Quaker, for example, dropping off his drab and his 
grammar, and even his morality, will certainly reveal 
the type of his connection to any one at all conversant 
with it. 

In so many ways we discover the largely compre- 
hensive, far-reaching fact of our solidarity; a fact 
which has never been overlooked, but which, for the 
want of any better term of designation, we are learning 
of late more and more familiarly to speak of, under this 
rather dry French name, or epithet. Our theology has 
long been conversant with ideas closely related under the 
phrases, “ federal headship,” ‘‘ original sin,” ‘‘ covenant 
of works,” “imputed sin,” “sinning in Adam,” and the 
like. Some of these are scriptural expressions sub- 
jected to a dogmatical construction, and some of 
them are terms of merely theologic invention; but 
whatever else may be said, or understood, whether in 
or out of the Scripture use, they all recognize the one 
general fact of a solidarity in human life, such as ex- 
tends, in one way or another, to the liabilities of char- 
acter. Sometimes the Scriptures speak of “going with 
a multitude to do evil,” asif the multitude were a flood 
in which all the particular units are drifting ; some- 
times they speak of judgments descending on “the 
third and fourth generation” of wicked men, as if the 
law of a common retribution included all. 

Now it is by these conditions of solidarity that we 
are most often balked in our notions of individuality, and 
the responsibility of individual men for their conduct. 
We remember the idolatrows religions of the world, and 


144 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


it coes not escape our notice that whole peoples are 
configured by them to each other, in common ways of 
falsehood, lust, and cruelty. Suicide or self martyr 
dom is even held to be an act of pagan saintship. In 
at least one such pagan tribe, murder is executed under 
the bonds of religion. And, apart from all religious 
configurations of character, how often are children 
trained up in human families to dexterity in crime— 
sent forth in the morning, for example, to steal, and 
returning at night to feed on the light-finger revenue 
of their day—when, if they have not stolen'quantities 
enough, they must be punished for their want of success ! 
Wrong is the very matrix, in a sense, in which thou- 
sands of hapless children are formed. There is, in 
fact, no vice or crime in the world, which is not drunk 
in often from the element in which human beings live, 
almost as naturaily as a sponge receives the waters of 
the sea. The dreadful disadvantage thus ineurred 
under the solidarity principle troubles immensely all 
our notions of morality or responsible obligation. We 
can not refuse to make some large allowance of charity 
for such examples, and we are sometimes tempted even 
to go the length of justification. ‘“ Under such enor- 
mous disadvantages,” we say, ‘‘ who could be worthier 
or better? If there is any stone to be cast, let some 
other do it; we cannot.” 

Here, then, is our problem, and it must be admitted 
to be a really dark one. What are the uses or advan- 
tages to be gained at so great cost? By what con- 
ceivable advantage can disadvantages so immense be 


OF THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY. 145 


morally compensated? In preparing our answer to 
this question, three preliminaries of great importance 
are easily settled :— 

1. That something closely akin to a condition of soli 
darity, or common liability, appears to be involved in 
the existence of moral obligation itself. Such obliga- 
tion supposes the fact of society, for it is only in social 
relations that opportunities of right and wrong are cre- 
ated. And then, having such opportunities. provided, 
as moral liberty or freedom of choice is given there is 
just so far a liberty given to be bad, carry a bad 
influence, create a poisonous atmosphere, perpetrate 
frauds and deeds of violence, so to infect or shake 
the whole frame of society, as also all the members 
may be doing by a like abuse of liberty; and then 
society itself being contaminated, will be in turn a 
contaminating power, of necessity. The whole stress of 
solidarity in it will now be set for evil. All which 
could noway be prevented, without either taking us 
out of society, or never putting us into it; in which 
case we must have a completely sole existence—which 
is the same as to say that we shall have no moral 
sphere at all. As regards the solidarity plan, there 


Pec] 


was in fact no choice; for, not existing under such a © 


condition, we could have no other field of responsible 
action. Our right of morality would be just like a 
marital right and duty in a world where all are men. 
2. It is equally plain that we could not exist in 
a way of reproduction, or in terms of family relation- 
ship. _— being involved in derivative conseqnencea 


ws 


146 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


and liabilities. Fatherhood and motherhood must carry 
down effects on childhood, by a law of necessary causa- 
tion. We encounter, at this point, a grand fact of 
solidarity, at the foundation or first inception of life. 
We must either be created outright, every man by 
himself, full-grown probably and without distinction of 
sex, or else we must be one race in the constituent lia- 
bilities of solidarity—hooked together, in our generations, 
by a law of derivative life. And so, inherent qualities and 
tendencies must pass by organic participation. Assum- 
ing this fact, which is incontrovertible, we have it then as 
a question, whether a scheme of existence without child- 
hood, without fatherhood or motherhood, without nat- 
ural affection of any kind, without any right of training, 
or counsel, or authority, or any element of family life, 
sanctified or unsanctified by religion—whether such a 
scheme of existence would have any moral advantages 
over the reproductive, family state by which our life is 
initiated? We judge not unlikely, in our haste, that it 
would; but there could not be a greater mistake. 

We must be created, in that case, in the full matu- 
rity of our powers; but we should have no particle of 
experience to begin with, no judgments formed by ex- 
perience. Our full-grown passions would be schooled 
by no habit of self-control. Our will would be green 
as infancy, and yet in full volume as to power. Our 
curiosity to know the unknown would inevitably put 
us on just the bad experiment of Adam, and every one 
would try it for himself. Meantime we should have 
entered on a loveless life, which is, so far, worse even 


OF THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY, 147 


than our fall—nobody caring for us, and we for nobody 
—for we have, in such a case, no ties of natural affec- 
{2on. It would be wonderful, too, if we were not set 
upon by every sort of robbery and wrong from the 
comers that arrived before us, only to get our compen- 
sation, by like robberies and wrongs upon those who 
come after, when our turn of hazing arrives. Having 
no constituent solidarity, our sole state would be the 
state of Ishmael. We should be obliged to create 
artificial bonds of defense by conspiracy; and our con- 
spiracies, gotten up without friendship, would be soli- 
darities in selfishness—bonds themselves of oppression 
—the most unmitigated, devilish type of woe that can 
well be conceived. The freeness of character in good 
would be vastly more abridged than now, and the com- 
mon liabilities of wrong immensely increased. Exist- 
ing in this manner as solitary magnitudes, our soleness 
would only bring us into a state of moral oppression 
hostile to all benefit, and in fact quite unendurable. 
After all, our solidarity, that brings so many kinds of 
moral detriment upon us, and of which we so often 
complain, throwing all the charges of our misdoing 
upon it, is a far more genial and beneficent condition 
than any more solitary or separately-begun estate we 
are able to conceive. 

3. It is another very important preliminary, never 
to be hid or forgotten, when speaking on this subject, 
that no human being is so far dominated by the moral 
disadvantages of his bad connection, or the bad exam- 
ple in which he has been trained, as to be wholly un 


148 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


conscious of wrong, or clear of blame, on account of it. 
There are two kinds or degrees of wrong; one which 
violates the everlasting, ideal principle of right, and a 
second which only violates certain specific rules or 
maxims of conduct which are conceived to be exeeutory 
of the principle. No moral being can reject the prin- 
ciple, or consciously be out of the principle, without 
blame. No condition of solidarity can excuse him 
from this blame; for the principle of right-doing is in 
all men, passing through all solidarities, the same in all, 
whatever be their religions or customs. They would 
not be men without this great, fixed law of duty in 
them, even as the animals themselves are not. But it 
is not so in respect to the particular preceptive rules 
of conduct which are gotten up to interpret and apply 
this law. They may vary largely in different nations 
and ages, being more developed in one, more crude and 
wild in another; demanding here what is forbidden 
there, and begetting, under one solidarity, a practice 
which is abhorrently wrong under another. Here, in 
this department of specific action, there will be great 
diversities, and no one is likely to blame himself, when 
the practice he maintains coincides with the practice 
of his time, or people, or family. Therefore we are to 
make, in this field of preceptive rule and practice, a 
very large allowance for what to us is very false and 
low; never judging others, differently associated and 
trained, as we would judge ourselves. They may even 
be justified in that which to us would bring the bitter- 
est self-condemnation. We only know that they never 


OF THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY. 149 


are justified in doing or meaning any thing wrong, as 
related to eternal principle. Thus it may be that the 
Spartan children, trained to theft by public law itself, 
had never a feeling of compunction in their lives con- 
cerning that practice; and yet, being consciously out 
of principle, and wrong in the grand moral aim of 
their life, they would carry along so much, at least, of 
condemnation in all their conduct, and would have no 
more claim to be justified by us, than they have reason 
to justify themselves. 

We teach ourselves, in this manner, to give full 
scope to the solidarities of feeling and practice in which 
men are trained ; condemning them never, save as they 
violate their convictions, but perfectly assured of this, 
thet they never do, in fact, quite justify themselves ; 
because they go into all their conduct with a sentence 
of self-condemnation upon them, for the conscious 
alienation of their life from what should be its reign- 
ing principle. And so much is there in this, that we 
should be much nearer the truth if we judged them to 
be guilty, in all their deviations from our own stand- 
ards of practice, than we should in a clean acquittal of 
all wrong because they have not been trained in our 
standards; for there is one standard everlasting, which, 
as being simply men, they have revealed in their 
hearts, and by which they are consciously condemned. 
The question of wrong or sin is never ended, ag a cer- 
tain class of writers in our time very flippantly assume, 
when they find one people or tribe maintaining a stand- 
ard exactly contrary to the standard of another; for there 


150 MORAL USES OF Dunk THINGS. 


is a higher, all-inclusive, absolute standard, and it may 
be that none of us are justified by that. In this stand- 
ard all our judgments touch bottom, and by this every 
thing is to be squared; and if we have precepts less in- 
clusive and more superficial, it is better to make ot 
them only what is to to be made. 

Having settled these preliminaries, we come out in 
the conviction that our debate is not ended, and that, 
after all due allowance made for the solidarities of our 
existence, there is yet abundant room for the belief that 
they belong to the best-appointed moral condition pos- 
sible, and have moral uses in which our advantage is 
deeply concerned. What these uses are we are now to 
inquire. 

1. It will of course be conceded that, where there is 
a solidarity or common life in good, that good will 
have a more complete and more easily controlling 
sway. The hard thing we complain of is, that evil 
gets a power so nearly absolute in this manner. Of 
course it will be admitted that good obtains a similar 
advantage. The state of solidarity works either way, 
and the design appears to be to bring it more and more 
completely on the side of good; for a progress in truth 
and character and all forms of good appears to be 
expected: so that, finally, grand consolidations and 
massings of society will be gathering heavier momen- 
tum and a more and more beneficent sway over the 
conduct and life of individuals. Good men will then 
be born by nations-—a nation in a day. 

The beneficent powers thus garnered up in the soli- 


ON THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY. 161 


darity principle, we have never yet seen; and we take 
up very hastily the impression that it is a kind of 
organic law of advantage given only to wrong and evil 
But suppose we take, for example, that fearfully depress- 
ing and disabling power, which is exerted against indi- 
vidual industry and character by a bad or oppressive 
government. It is a public despotism, massing the 
might of a nation against private worth and success. 
Let now such private worth and success, consolidated 
in some people by intelligence and religion, so far get 
the start of despotism, here or there, as to organize for 
itself institutions that give full hope and liberty and 
scope to every man and child—what will now be seen 
more certainly than that every sort of despotism in the 
world will be yielding itself slowly to the new exam- 
ple; growing beneficent, fostering intelligence, liberat- 
ing the press and religion; so that finally, private 
worth and character, instead of being suppressed, will 
be called forth and created in all the old, exhausted 
nations by the governments that seemed before to be 
their inevitable hinderance? Here, then, we have one 
people, constructing, at last, a grand solidarity of right- 
eousness in government, more or less nearly universal, 
And so this one people gets a hold, through the soli- 
darities of civil order all over the world, whereby it 
changes and raises up into character and new-sprung 
life all other peoples all over the world; making even 
the kings to be their nursing fathers and the queens 
their nursing mothers, in all noblest principle and most 
vigorous intelligence. And then, when it has ccme to 


162 MORAL JSES OF DARK THINGS. 


this, how very difficult will it be for any government 
ever to become bad or oppressive again; for every 
throne or state is looked upon by every other, and can 
not willingly lose its respect! 

Take another example of a different type. We 
speak, and so does the Scripture, of a lapsed condition 
that is brought on the race by inheritance ; for, as cer- 
tain as evil is upon any former generation, some damage 
must accrue, on physiological principles, to every sub- 
sequent generation. Without being made responsible, 
then, for what we have not done ourselves, we are in- 
volved in the common damage of a common liability, 
and go down as a race in the strict solidarity of our 
connection. We might also go down, every man for 
himself, in a state of sole existence—we probably 
should—but the disorder we suffer by inheritance puts 
us in a state of common disadvantage, where evil gets 
the ascendency prior even to our consent. We some- 
times complain of this, and imagine that no fair chance 
at all is given us. But suppose this same law of 
physiological connection to be finally rectified and 
purified in the progress of time, all Christian parent- 
ages becoming the spring thus of a graciously rectified 
and purified germinal life in their children—and it 
must as certainly be so as that there is any transmission 
of quality at all—and then these two results will follow: 
First, that the new solidarity in good, thus consum- 
mated, will be at once more prosperous and more 
healthy, being clear of the poisons of vice and of all 
habits of excess, and will thus overpopulate and virtu- 


ON THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY. 153 


ally live down the more corrupted families: Secondly, 
that every such family will become a rectified stock, 
transmitting seeds of uprightness that will propagate. 
much as they themselves are propagated, even to the 
end of the world. In these two modes, the great soli- 
darity principle, which we think of only as our disad- 
vantage and the spring of our moral disaster, is to be- 
come itself the propagator finally of righteous life for 
the whole race. We now think, and are wont often to 
say, that being down, as a race, under evil, there is not 
much really to come of our truly forlorn world, but 
loss and a vastly preponderant undoing ; but we do not 
consider that our experiment is barely begun; that we 
are yet to go on—as all our vast incipiencies and the 
foregone geologic eras prophesy—existing so long, in 
populations so vastly increased, and raised so high in 
quality, that the ages, looking back, will see us to be 
very nearly contemporary with Adam, and will think 
of the race as a grand providential success, fruitful only 
in good and triumphant only in blessing! 

2. Where a bad power gets advantage and a more 
dominating sway by massing itself in family connec- 
tions, and guilds, and castes, and whole nationalities, it 
is almost certain to finally weaken itself by the very 
solidarities that in the beginning gaveitstrength. It acts, 
at first, with a fearfully propelling power; and then 
it begins to react, letting itself down, as it were, by 
exhaustion. Aristocracies flourish in this manner, ob- 
taining, for a time, greater and still greater eminence, 
as the splendors and pomps they display are raised in 


154 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


the scale of magnificence; captivating, as by a spell 
of admiration, vast multitudes of retainers; but the 
pride and gilded virulence of their contemptuous habit 
begins at length to make them felt as an oppression 

they sink in dignity as their frequent profligacy com- 
pels; the admirations they raised fall away and are 
sickened by impatience, till at last the tremendous 
reaction of their pompous lie breaks it utterly down, 
and the sublime truths of universal manhood and broth 
erhood are erected into higher sway and a more benefi- 
cent solidarity. Fashion goes through a similar course; 
nothing is so captivating and all-compelling as a rising 
fashion, and nothing so weak and wind-broken as a 
mode that begins to have the symptoms of wane. And 
the more nearly any fashion approaches to licentiousness 
of manners and conduct, the more sure is the reaction 
to be hastened, and the fools most ambitious to be for- 
ward in it, to slink away humbled and mortified by it. 
The power of domination wielded by a corrupt party 
will seem for a long time to grow by the appetite that 
feeds it, and what is called the discipline of the party 
will very nearly submerge all liberties of character and 
opinion in the individual members. But whether it be 
seen or not, such kind of growth is only organizing a 
monster, and that monster, like another of old time, 
will by and by devour his own children. His bad 
power will culminate, in other words, in such disorders, 
and distractions, and oppressions, within itself, as will 
rend its own combinations, and hurl it off the stage as 
an outlaw no more to be endured. The grandest, most 


OF THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY. 155 


appalling solidarity the world has ever seen is the 
Church of Rome; but it has passed the crisis of its 
majesty, and is sloping downward into a state of dejec- 
tion that is fast growing pitiful. And when it breaks, 
as break it must, what a lesson for good will it have 
given by its amazing assumptions and the dismal inani- 
ties of superstition it has finally worn out in the world! 
We spoke just now of another kind of solidarity in the 
organic propagations of the race. It propagates in one 
view, as we saw, evil itself, even as it propagates the 
existences that are its subjects. In that view, it seems 
to be only a law of moral disadvantage inserted into 
the human populations. But this bad solidarity, 
though it may never be wholly extirpated by its re- 
actions, is yet working powerfully always by reaction, 
We speak of it and think of it as our bond of death, 
the common desolator of our good possibilities and 
hopes, that which baffles our best personal endeavors 
and mocks all the dearest prospects of human society. 
The important thing to be noted is, that our common 
state of evil—evil as in terms of blood and kindred— 
creates in this manner a salutary and very intense preju- 
dice against it. Seeing its foul touch everywhere, 
and consciously struggling with its dreadful bondage 
within, we picture it as a destroyer with a grudge of 
animosity; we virtually detest its bad dominion, 
whether it is cast out in us or not. If we knew the 
state of evil only as our own bad choice, apart from all 
bad kinship and contamination of blood, we might 
even try to hold a good opinion of it; we certainly should 


156 MORAL Uses OF DARK LHLNds. 


not help ourselves into a bad opinion of it, as now, by 
the instigation of our flagrant fellow-sympz thy against it, 
On the whole, it will be found that all bad solidarities, 
while doing much to the moral disadvantage of the 
race, are yet under a doom of reaction, by which they will 
finally assist the complete reign of truthand righteous- 
ness. 

3. The condition of solidarity compels even those 
who are dominated by it to see what hideous evils and 
wrongs are in it, by the woes they bring on society and 
the persons closest to them in their human relation- 
ships, when its bad instigations are upon them. Take 
the example, near at hand, of our own late rebellion. 
Considering the numbers implicated, and the atrocity 
of the purpose attempted, there was never before so 
great a crime. We had a government that was the 
noblest fabric of liberty and public reason ever con- 
structed, looked upon with new-born hope by the 
weary, time-worn civilizations all over the world. It 
was cloven down by revolt, and a conspiracy vast 
enough to make an empire by itself proclaimed its end. 
War only could restore it, and it must be war upon a most 
gigantic scale. By its armed millions trailing over broad 
spaces of territory, occupied by millions before resting 
in peace ; by its hundreds of battles, great and small, strew- 
ing these spaces with dead; by cities, and even whole 
states swept clean, as by a tempest of fire; by families, 
in almost every neighborhood, mourning the loss of 
their manliest fathers, and sons of noblest promise; by 
four long years of terror and distraction that kept even 


OF THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY. 157 


the air tremulous with apprehension—at so great cost 
the victory of right is won. And yet the solidarity in 
wrong was a body too vast to be cooled ina day. But 
few, alas! of all the agitators and forward leaders of the 
rebellion—none of all the people concerned in it but the 
poor victims who were forced into it against their loyalty 
—appear to have become truly sensible, as yet, of the 
enormity of the crime. They still smoke and smolder 
in the pride of their defeat, defiant, for the most part, 
of control, relieving their impotence by the violent epi- 
thets they heap on the friends of order, and claiming 
even the right, as before all rights were forfeited, to 
make their own terms of pacification! All which we 
duly understand when we speak the word slavery—it is 
the solidarity of wrong in human slavery; that which 
overawed dissent, and hunted the friends of order into 
the ranks to die; that which, having organized a vast 
savage empire, in the domineering instincts of absolut- 
ism, cannot be suddenly tempered to order and reason. 
But there is just now a token of relenting here and there, 
and the time is not far off when all this rage shall utterly 
die. The bond of wrath is broken, slavery is gone, the 
slave country for the present is a ruin, the sublime 
masterhood is poor, and the immense burdens it has 
hung as an incubus on the productive industry of many 
generations, it must now itself assist to bear. Is any 
one ignorant as to what must be the issue? It can be 
none but this: that they are going, as reflection gets 
more opportunity, to look on these terrible woes of 
rebellion as witnesses against the stupendous solidarity 


158 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


of sin, in their slaveholding manners and society. The 
walls they see here and there grimed with smoke and 
scarred with shot; the breastworks and redoubts over- 
grown with bushes; the sad stories repeated, and faces 
looked upon of orphans now grown up, and widows 
gray with age, whose loyal protectors they tore away 
and sent off to their.armies, never to return; yes, and 
the faces they meet of contemporaries whom they knew 
standing fast by their country in the wild, mad hour, 
suffering scorn and confiscation for its sake—all these 
tokens are going to be witnesses, more piercing as life 
advances; and the whole bad history of the time is going, 
before they die, and for all generations to come, to be a 
standing revelation of the terrible virulence of this in- 
stitution, this overgrown solidarity of wrong, such as no 
testimonies or confessions of individual men could pro- 
duce. And what is to be specially noted further is 
that the Union masters, those who were so totally over- 
borne by the current, and suffered such bitter cost for 
their fidelity, will themselves have gotten from the wild, 
mad violence that took away their liberty, a feeling of 
responsibility for the common sin of slavery, such as 
they could never have felt, under any most pungent 
appeals of private conviction. Here, then, is a vast 
solidarity in wrong, probably unmatched before in the 
history of the world, and it is going to result in a felt con- 
viction of the wrong, that is not exceptional, but com- 
mon to all. Indeed, when there was a fast proclaimed 
by the Confederacy in revolt, it is not difficult to believe 
that the solitary men of Union -vent deeper into it, and 


OF THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY. 159 


felt more humbled by their ill desert in the common 
sin of the time, than any of their neighbors most 
forward in the rebellion. 

Take a different kind of example. A once profligate 
and vicious father has a child spotted with incapacity 
in his organization—idiot, or deformed, or subject to 
pain, and perhaps distorted by it. Under the laws of 
blood and kindred that child is his, and “ this,” he is 
obliged to say, “is my stamp put upon it.” He may 
be a man practically restored to ways of virtue; and, 
if so, it will only cost him conflicts the more dreadful, 
that he is obliged to look thus on the face of his sin, 
still and always before him, in a shape so appalling. 
Meantime, if his child has sense enough to know why 
he is so badly misshapen, or whence he draws his mor- 
bid, misbegotten temperament, it will yet never occur 
to him that he is no subject of accountability, because 
the poison of his fatherhood is in him. Or we may 
take a case where the law of the house, after birth, be- 
comes the poison. A robber who murdered his victim 
is brought forth to the scaffold, where he is to suffer the 
extreme penalty of the law. And there is a poor, lorn 
creature there, who is called and calls herself his mother. 
She never inculcated in her son a single right principle. 
She taught him to steal, sent him forth to it every 
morning, flogged him at night when he returned with- 
out booty, and so, as we should say, made him exactly 
what he is,—we might even think of her as being her- 
self the criminal, which in some true sense she certainly 
is, And if she has any capability of compunction left, 


160 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


it will now, if ever, be seen, and will be as pungently 
moved as it can be. And yet we shall see that the son, 
brought up in such an atmosphere of crime, whipped 
into crime, learning how to live only by the fruit of 
crime,will distinctly show, and frankly confess, that he 
is rightly made responsible for his actions. How far 
short, indeed, any such bad solidarity may be from sub- 
merging individual responsibility, we are sometimes 
given to see, when a son or a daughter grows up as a 
flower of virtue, in the filthiest, most poisonous atmos- 
phere, more fixedly abhorring every sort of baseness, 
for the proximity to it in which the early childhood 
was passed. 

Once more, it is only by the resolute, upheaving power 
of individuals against the crushing weight of bad or 
opposing solidarities that a really massive and over- 
mastering virtue is prepared. A great character sup 
poses great victories, won by invincible courage. It is 
not, of course, to be supposed that God has raised up 
these frowning solidarities about us, and arrayed them 
against us, merely for our good. As far as they are in 
wrong, they create themselves, and then it is given us, 
every one, to have his advantage in the power we get 
by confronting them. And so the great leaders, agita- 
tors, and champions of civil liberty, bursting their way 
through the bonds of despotism ; the reformers of wrong 
and vicious custom; the restorers of holy truth, long 
disfigured by the dogmas of false science; the heroic 
believers, who, for Christ’s sake, have been cast out in 
their youth by the fierce, ungodly will of their fathers; 


OF THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY. 161 


the martyrs who have carried their bodies into the fire 
to bear witness against persecutors in power—all such 
we look upon as the true men, because they pay so great 
a price for their birthright. The solidarities they found 
against them; but they had their principle, and in that, 
single handed, they were the majority. The respecta- 
bilities stood mountain high in their path, but they had 
the courage to pass over. They had soul enough in the 
right to confront multitudes, and dignities, and sancti- 
ties, and all kinds of powers and times. Having some- 
thing true to be thought, they could think it; some- 
thing right to be done, they could do it. They could 
be unpopular; and when they had great principles to . 
wrestle for, they expected to be. In this manner, being 
never atall willful, they yet came to have a tremendous 
will—meek, gentle, immovable; able to look quietly 
down over numbers and names, and all dictations of 
bad solidarity, moving, as it were, in calculable force 
and certainty against them. And this it is that makes 
the sublimity of a character morally great. How it can 
ever become massive and solid enough, when it has no 
such heavy bulk of resistance to move, we are scarcely 
able to imagine. 

Thus if a time should finally come, as we have shown 
reason to expect, when the solidarities will themselves 
be converted to the other side, beginning to work 
through all the laws of inheritance and society, for the 
propagation of good, as they have done for the propa- 
gation of evil, then, as duty will have so much less to 
resist and overcome, it must take on a character having 


162 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


as much less vigor. It will be fashioned more by yield 
ing, and less by the overcoming of resistance, and wil. 
have a smooth, gentle, innocent way, forming a char- 
acter more like that of children translated early, and 
having only to bloom in the soft airs of Paradise, never 
to fight. Such kind of character will have a true 
beauty, but there will be nothing grandly heroic in it. 
The heroes of the world came earlier, and we may well 
count it one of our particular privileges and honors to 
live in these heroic ages, when virtue gets due bulk 
and brawn by its victories. 

On the whole, I think it will be seen, as the result 
and proper conclusion of this discussion, how very 
little weight and significance there is in the assump- 
tion, so pompously and frequently thrust upon us, 
that wrong is but a word, and no real matter for 
which we are answerable. The doctrine propounded 
in high airs of philosophy is, that we are all going on 
by development, and that the virtues and crimes, the 
saints and felons, are all, in fact, equally good; prod- 
ucts all of circumstance, inheritance, and social insti- 
gation. If such teachings were less shallow, they 
would be atrocious. Weak souls, emulous of strength, 
often hope to conquer the repute of it by audacity—a 
very cheap form of vigor to which they ought certainly 
to be equal. Nobody, in fact, believes, speculate as he 
may, that circumstance or society does every thing in 
us, and we nothing. Good and evil are, in our idea, 
the most absolute opposites; and there is no bridge, or 
place, or space for a bridge between them, more than 


ON THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY. 162 


between a straight line and acrooked. When we do 
wrong, no matter under what inducement, it is not 
because we are fools that remorse takes hold of us, but 
because we are men. When we suffer wrong we spurn 
the philosopher at hand,who will save us from the feel- 
ing of blame by what he can tell us of development— 
that is, of society, circumstance, family origin, family 
training; we think there was something also in the 
bad will of the wrong-doer, and we hold him respon- 
sible to justice. We do not abjure punishments, 
because we believe in society; we have a place for 
punishments, just because society exists, wanting their 
defense; for we see that single souls have power to 
face all society, and seize upon it as their prey. Who, 
meantime, are more unsparing and fierce in their 
denunciations than our philanthropizing philosophers, 
when they undertake to be reformers? Is there noth- 
ing blamable in what they so bitterly denounce? 
Doubtless, all due allowances are to be made in our 
moral condemnations, for the bad solidarities in which 
wrong-doers have been trained—not for those only 
which have put their stamp of ignominy on the weak 
and the low, but as readily for those which are inbred 
in men of condition. Slaveholding for example—who 
has been swayed and fashioned by a power more abso- 
lute than the solidarities of slavery ; bred as a tyrant, 
trained up to a domineering habit, even in childhood ; 
wonted in cruelty ; stimulated in passion; fed on the 
spoils of right? There was never a form of society 
more imperiously toned, as respects the liberties of 


164 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


duty and the possibilities of character. All men are 
to have their allowance, and yet as certainly to have, 
in wrong, their condemnation. Nor let any one think 
it hard that he himself is required to stem so many 
opposing tides and storms, in maintaining the struggles 
of duty; rather let him take it bravely as his oppor 
tunity. 


VIil. 
OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 


Tue creation of God is one, having all its parts ip 
such relation that they make up a whole which ex- 
cludes the possible notion of plurality. This oneness 
also is the type in matter, of a complete, universal 
society preparing in its populations. As God has but 
one creation so he has but one society, and he is doing 
every thing to compact and perfect that society; draw- 
ing it to everlasting accord, in one kind of morality, 
under one set of principles, resulting in one kind of 
character, and a common beatitude with himself. And 
yet there seem to be fences of separation here and 
there, that, in working such a state of complete unity, 
would not be expected. As far as we know, there is 
no intercourse allowed, or made possible, between the 
populations of the stars, but they go their rounds of 
revolution, as completely separated as if they were 
always to be as many societies, separated by as many 
gulfs of incommunicable distance. Sometimes we are 
not altogether patient of this non-intercourse. We 
want to know these populations; and it is not mere 
curiosity, but the sense of a fellow-nature and feeling, 
that puts us reaching after them. Who are these 
hrethren of the stars? In what fortunes do they have 


166 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


their lot? What stature and figure have they? What 
kind of history do they make? Have they stood clear 
of evil, or are they down under it, and struggling up 
through it and out of it, in much weariness and sorrow, 
even as we are? Our heart, which has no sense of 
distances, yearns after them and beckons them; yet 
there they hang, as far away as if we cared not for 
them—and there is no bridge! 

This walling apart we discover also in other matters 
closer at hand, where we should not look for it; as if 
it were designed to separate, or hold apart, large fami- 
lies and nations of people that belong to the general 
brotherhood of the race. Vast wilds and almost con- 
tinental forests, great deserts, and immense oceans of 
water, separate and hold apart how many of the chief 
populations of the world. And yet, perhaps, we can 
distinguish reasons of beneficence here, that will, in 
part, explain the separations -we discover elsewhere ; 
showing how they do, in fact, conduce to the growth, 
and right, final development of the one, complete 
society. These wild forests and deserts and oceans are, 
in one view, circumvallations of so many peoples, 
living apart thus in their fortresses. Were their habit- 
able parts swung up side by side with each other, and 
separated only by imaginary lines, they would all be 
marching everywhere, and safe against the chances of 
defeat, or sudden irruption, nowhere. In a bad world 
populations are hostile, and fences and defenses are 
wanted to keep them safe. They are better prepared 
for society, that, for the present, they are kept apart 


OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 167 


In the particular instance also of the sea, setting nations 
apart by spaces of water that are in fact highways of 
commerce and beneficent community in trade, may we 
not see typified and illustrated the general fact, that 
all separations of peoples and worlds are separations 
for society and not against it? Had the populations 
of the stars free travel and swift, passing at will and 
telegraphically through all distances, the very sky 
might have been scarcely better than a battle-ground, 
and the zodiac itself kept red by the fights of armies. 
If these populations are all in evil, the spaces between 
them, whether grateful to our human curiosity or not, 
are probably not wider than they should be. 

By these suggestions, which are confessedly sugges- 
tions of ignorance to a great extent, I hope to get some 
little advantage, in the introduction of « particular 
subject that is more pressing; namely, the condition 
of absolute non-intercourse, that appears to be ordained 
between departed souls and their friends whom they 
have left behind. We very frequently express our 
wonder at this, and sometimes we complain of it. 
Could these departed come back and make report, how 
much would they tell us that we need above all to 
know! How easily, too, could it be done; and who 
would be disadvantaged, or damaged by it? And 
what short work would be made of all our most 
troublesome doubts concerning immortality and God, 
and God’s great future! Now, we should know, we 
think, and no more only guess, or believe. What 
appetite also would our returning brothers give us for 


{68 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


the celestial things; telling what they have seen of 
them, what kind of greetings met them when they 
arrived, and what ravishments took hold of them, in the 
wonderful scenes and societies into which they entered. 
We do not speak with any such desire of the return of 
our bad friends or acquaintances, and testify no such 
regret that they are not allowed to come and report 
their story; though perhaps we might look for as good 
profit in that. Perhaps we recoil from that unpleasant 
kind of intercourse, making tacitly a selection that 
will bring us none but the righteous and well condi- 
tioned. Perhaps we forget for the time, that the de- 
parted are possibly not all in such condition, as regards 
felicity, that we can receive them and hear the report 
of their experience with pleasure. 

Let me not be understood, however, to assume that 
the departed of this world never do, in fact, return. 
Two or three such cases of righteous men returning to 
the world, besides the case of Lazarus and others raised 
from the dead, are reported in the Scriptures. If, as 
many suppose, the bad spirits concerned in the demo- 
niacal possessions are the spirits of bad men, working 
still in craft and malignity, and doing still their mis- 
chiefs, then it would seem that these are, at least so far, 
to be taken as cases of return; only they do not come 
in the bodily form, to be personally known and spoken 
with. Many persons in our day believe that by a cer- 
tain art of necromancy, in what are called mediums, 
or magnetic clairvoyants, the dead are recalled very 
rauch at will, making responses to questions that are 


OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 169 


put to them, and giving their advice in real oracles. I 
know nothing of this, save that such as were very intel- 
ligent, cultivated men when alive, give very unintelli- 
gent and crude answers now, and also that, when their 
oracles prove false, it is given as excuse, that bad or 
dishonest spirits coming back will of course deceive, 
and are therefore to be trusted with caution. Sweden- 
borg thought he had commerce with spirits—good 
spirits, of course—and had a theory about our relations 
to the spirit-world that took away all sorts of distance, 
but distance of character. Doubtless it has occurred 
to almost every thoughtful person, that our affinities 
put us in immediate company, possibly, with all like 
affinities good or bad, and that so we get helps in good, 
or demonizing powers in evil, from the invisible access 
to us of departed spirits. I shall recur to this matter 
in a way more positive hereafter, and therefore dismiss 
it for the present. 

Still it is practically true that our departed do not 
come back in such visible, external way as we appear 
to mean when we speak of it, and that they are so far 
kept in a relation of practical non-intercourse. This 
is the loss, if it be a loss, that we deplore in our com- 
plaint. And the fact Christ himself appears to recog- 
nize, denying most expressly that we suffer any loss on 
account of its Thus, when the rich man of his parable 
makes request that a messenger may be sent back to 
warn his brothers, the reply is, for substance, It will 
do no good, they will not believe the messenger—“ If 


they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they 
8 


170 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


be persuaded though one rose from the dead.” I be 
lieve there is a general feeling that Christ exaggerates 
a little in this answer of Lazarus ; that we should, nev- 
ertheless, be really persuaded, and that Christ only 
means to put in the best defense he can for the existing 
fact of non-intercourse, as he finds it in our actual ex- 
perience—arguing rather from the fact than toward it. 
Indeed, it seems to us all a thing perfectly obvious, 
that the question of immortality could be settled easily, 
by just letting witnesses come back and tell their story ; 
80 easily, that it sometimes wakens a feeling of suspicion 
lest there may be something hollow in the faith of im- 
mortality; else why should an evidence, so much 
wanted and so reasonably demanded, be withheld? 
These friends of ours and of God would certainly come 
back if they were still alive, even though it might cost 
them much revulsion of feeling to mix again, so far, 
with scenes of guiltiness and characters uncongenial. 
Costing them much sacrifice, they would do it the more 
gladly for that reason. Why, then, is this gate of eter- 
nity so fast barred? Why are these dead so dumb— 
showing no token or sign? Has that nothingness we 
dread overtaken them? Most of us think otherwise, 
and yet how often are we made to think just this. 
Now, the first thing, as we open this question for study, 
is to form a more full and exact conception of what is 
implied in the kind of intercourse we ask. We are in 
no condition to judge rightly, if we do not follow out 
the subject far enough and carefully enough, to see the 
very uncomfortable things which may possibly belong 


OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 171 


to such a mode of intercourse, or which are, in fact, in 
cluded in it. The supposition is, that the departed are 
to come back in body and voice, to communicate with 
us through sight and hearing. It is not their silent 
ghost we ask ; for then what evidence could we have, 
that any thing better than a strange illusion has be 
fallen us? When they come, it must also be, either 
because they are sent by selection, or because they are 
particularly sought by us, or because they are free 
to come and go at their own will. Probably enough 
all three suppositions will concur. The latter, not 
including the others, appears to be the general 
thought which occupies our demand; for it is not a 
few sporadic cases of return that we ask—so few and 
far apart that all evidence brought us will be rumor 
and hearsay—but we want them to come freely, and 
come to us and to everybody that wants light, so that 
we may have witnesses always at hand. In this man- 
ner, they are to be somewhat common among us—not 
sufficiently common to be included as fixed residents in 
our society ; but so far common as to create no special 
surprise. And it does not appear to be often considered 
that our required evidence will be incomplete unless 
the bad souls also come back; for they have had an 
experience as truly as the good, and it is an experience 
which it greatly concerns us possibly to know. The 
good, not being in that experience, will know nothing 
specially concerning it; and their story, being wholly 
beatific in its color, will put us in a feeling that every 
thing is beatific there, unless some adequate representa 


172 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


tion of the bad experience is also given. But if these 
bad souls are to come back, they may come as deceivers 
possibly, and not as faithful witnesses, and it will 
be impossible for us to guess whether their report 
is true or false. What their behavior, too, will 
be, is a question that looks ominous and difficult. 
Who shall answer for them that they will keep the 
peace? What conspiracies may they not concoct? 
What revolutions and tumults may they not stir 
up? In times of public war, what advantage will 
they have in the spy service? In the intrigues of 
diplomacy, they may easily become the chief intriguers. 
When they meet the good spirits returned, as they 
sometimes will, being all in body and so made visible, 
it is not quite certain that they will not sometimes be 
moved with so hot a feeling of hostility as to attack 
them with violence. And what forbids the supposition 
that we, grown familiar thus with the other world’s 
people, as we certainly should be in a little while, 
may not sometimes be so badly annoyed by the inter- 
ruptions and the unwelcome advice of the departed 
good, and so easily exasperated against them by the 
hostile instigations of the bad, as to set ourselves upon 
them in a real persecution—even as we persecuted 
Christ, who himself came down from heaven, and proved 
himself by his miracles, as no departed brother of our 
race ever could or can. 

But suppose we consent to take up with a half repre- 
sentation of the other world, and let the bad departed 
remain wholly shut away, a great many other perplex- 


OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 173 


ities will be involved, such as more than counterbal- 
ance the chances of benefit. A certain man, of reputed 
worth and piety, died yesterday, and we ask the de 
parted brother, who returns this morning, and who 
knows him well, if he has seen him? He replies, with 
a sad look, that he has; that he has come out badly on 
the other side, where it is discovered that he gained 
his late case at law, against the estate of a poor widow 
and her children, by perjury. The dispossession re- 
quired by the verdict is to be executed to-morrow, and 
what shall be done? Will the court execute an order 
against the discovery thus made? Can the case be re- 
opened? Probably not, for no such thing is known to 
the law, as hitherto administered. But if such discov- 
eries were really coming out every day, the law would 
be different. Every court must have its right to revise, 
and even to revise the public records, when such new 
evidences come back in the report of God’s messen- 
gers. So if we ask whether the court, in the case sup- 
posed, will cite the departed man to appear and testify ; 
perhaps it will not; but if such reappearances of the 
departed were grown common, common law would 
require it. And if the departed citizen who is cited to 
appear and testify, should refuse, in a case where both 
mercy and justice so plainly require it, he would even 
be accessory to wrong. In this way, as the departed 
are to be largely mixed with the living, so they must 
be mixed with all the proceedings of law, civil and 
criminal. And what the result will be, in such a mix- 
ture of worlds, it is not easy to guess. It is very cer 


174 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


tain that no man will be hung for a crime, when 
twenty messengers from the other world come testify- 
ing that he is innocent; as certain that no public 
record can stand, when as many messengers from the 
unseen world testify that it is a forgery, and that the 
forger was discovered there a hundred years ago and 
put to his reward. All public records, in fact, will 
have to be corrected by the records of eternity. 

Meantime, what a state of confusion will come down 
upon all the schools and teachers and books of 
‘theology, when departed men come back to report 
the facts, discoveries, and principles accepted in the 
better world. All the authoritative doctrines, elabora- 
ted with so great care and study, will have to be re- 
vised—some to be modified, some to be corrected, some 
to be expurgated, some to be abated and denounced. 
The new witnesses will not be fanatics or revolu- 
tionists; but there is a way of wisdom, in their tranquil 
utterance, al] the more impressive, that they tell how 
largely they have been themselves corrected, and how 
they have learned to put every thing in a color so 
different. Probably some of the doctors will be wholly 
unable to believe their testimony, or will insist on their 
being impostors, and not the departed whose names 
they have taken. Neither can we forget how very soon 
the feeling of awe must be taken off by such conditions 
of familiarity, and how liable the two kinds of teachers 
—one from this world and the other from above— 
might be to fall into a public wrangle for their opinions, 
Probably not even Luther, coming back as rectified, 


OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 175 


would be orthodox. The teachers returned will of 
course be more capalile; but the teachers we have of 
our own will be enough more positive and logical, to 
hold a considerable chance of preponderance. 

Every department, in short, of life and every sort of 
transaction will be somehow changed and put in dis- 
order. Sometimes the departed, nowise diminished in 
their affections and the sense of what is due to family 
engagements, might intrude on new connections formed, 
in very unwelcome and appalling visits. Sometimes 
a godly saint might be recalled and found present, 
as the only true mourner, weeping over the heartles. 
ness and hollow parade of his own funeral. 

Now, it will be objected, I pxesume, by some, that I 
am able to raise this look of maladjustment oly by 
supposing an over-physical or literal return of the de- 
parted. What, then, is really meant, we again ask, by 
those who so often complain or testify their wonder 
that no state of intercourse with the dead is permitted ? 
Do they simply want a flitting, cursitating, ghostly ap- 
pearance, such as we name by the word appariticn ? 
some phantasm which is here and there and nowhere; 
which vanishes as soon as it is seen, and can not be 
found, and which nobody can be quite certain that he 
has seen at all? How many such uncertified, practically 
unbelieved appearings do we hear of every day. No, 
they want something to make evidence—not some ap- 
parition that requires more evidente—a man from the 
dead solid enough to certify himself, real enough to be 
distinguished by his roice, and staying long enough te 


176 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, — 
be no figure of the fancy. They also want such visit 


ations to be more or less common, that all may have 
the profit, and the strangeness of them may not shock 
or discourage the faith they are expected tohelp. And 
then, how far off are we from the very same over-real 
and literal conception I have been drawing out? The 
forbidding pictures and conjunctions I have sketched 
are clearly seen to be no extravaganza gotten up by 
overdrawing the matter in question. Exactly such 
reappearances are, in fact, wanted, and to be just as 
nearly common asI have represented. We may not 
so understand it, but this is the exact purport of our 
- desire—this and nothing else. 

It begins, in this manner, to be evident that the con- 
dition of non-intercourse between the departed world 
and the living, so much regretted by many, is not as 
undesirable as they assume it to be. If the fences that 
part the two worlds were taken down, and a state of 
free intercourse permitted, about every thing in the 
present order of life and society would be subverted. 
This, if only the good were allowed to return; and all 
the more certainly, if the bad also were coming abroad, 
to be at large among us. I think, too, that we shall be 
the better satisfied with our present state of non-inter- 
course, if, as I now propose, we set ourselves to a delib- 
erate consideration of the moral uses and benefits re- 
sulting from it. 

And here it will be seen, at a glance, that our state 
of non-intercourse, so-called, makes a full period, at the 
closing point of life, giving it a look of finality that is 


OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 177 


both impressive and salutary. If we thought our dying 
friends would be coming back to us to-morrow, to speak 
more impressively than to-day, because they will know 
more and testify from a point more advanced, we should 
not catch their last words to be concluded by them, for 
they are really not last—other and better we expect to 
follow. So if we were coming back ourselves, to make 
up our deficiencies of duty to our friends, how easily 
and securely should we postpone all our most important, 
most responsible obligations. But when we remember 
as now, that “the night cometh, when no man can 
work,” the charge that our Master connects with that 
most cogent argument—“ work while it is day”—prac- 
tically means “to-day,” allowing no postponement of 
the duties of to-day. 

It would also be a very great moral damage to us to 
have the grand realities of religion made as familiar as 
they would be if departed souls were allowed to be re- 
turning frequently, in visible form, to mingle with us. 
Such familiarity would breed contempt, just where a 
little more distance and withdrawment would give 
power. There isa foolish and presumptuous side in our 
human nature that makes too great familiarity danger- 
ous. Not even Jehovah would be God to his people, 
if he allowed them to see more than just the back of 
his retiring form. For this reason, doubtless, it is that 
the gate of the other world opens only that way, and 
never backward. The sanctity of that dread world is 
both more dread and more inviting, because it is kept 


unknown, or practically unreported to us. 
1* 


{78 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS- 


We are kept in this manner also from that kind of 
dissipation which is so easily begotten by an obtrusive 
and shallow curiosity. In this kind of curiosity, we 
forget both our errand and our measure. Could we 
question thus departed souls as often as we please, and 
of such historic figure as we please to select, there 
would be no end to our questions, and no beginning to 
our moral benefit. We should be like those people 
_ who are going so often to the seers and sittings of necro- 
mancy, exulting much in the fine proofs they get of 
their immortality by so many witnesses, yet believing 
only just as much less as they are more astounded 
by the revelations—religiously addled, and counting it 
the same thing as religion. If we could have departed 
souls returning thus at call or without, to be familiarly 
questioned, the simple curiosity gendered would be 
enough of itself to frustrate all the most sober purposes 
of life. In a spirit so frivolous, ora mood so light- 
headed, the motives of duty get no power. It is as if 
the soul were amusing itself in experiments on the un- 
known leap and what comes after, and so much delighted 
with the revelation obtained, as to look no more for 
profit, than it would in the breathing of a gas. Nothing 
is worse than to get the matters of duty and religion 
into the sphere of gossip. All the worse, if the dread 
gates of eternity are opened thus, chiefly for the sake 
of gossip, and the righteous dead let forth to be the 
chief gossipers ; telling stories for the curious, indulging 
them in talk and free report, and making up a gospel 
which is only gossip, nothing more. 


OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 179 


It would also give us an immense opportunity for 
ambition if this free intercourse with the departed were 
allowed us. If it were given us to make our own se- 
lection, we might never call for any but some very 
distinguished personage. We might desire; not sc 
much the saints as the high saints, such as made a name 
by their figure in this life. Intercourse with God’s 
little ones might not please our vanity, and the result 
would be that the great and celebrated personages 
would be hurried and worried, and set trooping day 
and night, to answer the calls of all most beggarly, in- 
significant people, while the little ones who pack God’s 
family—really the great to him, and for us the most 
competent teachers, because most truly on the level of 
or, experience—would not be summoned once in a 
thousand years. And if they should come to us of their 
own accord—supposing all to come in this manner and 
not by our selection—I fear that some of us might be 
mortified, and that sometimes the uncelebrated souls 
would encounter incivility enough from us to send them 
back to their places. While if one of us should have 4 
spontaneous visit from some great personage— W ash- 
ington, Luther, Paul, Moses, for example—it would 
inflate our ambition, I fear, to such a pitch as to quite 
overset the balance of our dignity. In our present . 
temper, neither class of souls, the great or lowly, could 
hope to bring us any spiritual gift. 

Again, it is a very great argument, as respects the 
subject in question, that we get all the best, most valid, 
most effective conceptions of things from the things 


180 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


themselves, and not from what rumor or tradition reveals, 
or from what talkers can tellus. We leari about nature, 
for example, by going directly to nature herself, putting 
our ear to her voices, observing her changes with our 
eyes. We do not look for genii to come forth out of 
nature and show us how she began and by what laws 
she works; we do not implicitly trust even travelers, 
when they report opinions or convictions instead of 
phenomena and fact. We expect to know the things, 
not from their mere talk about them, but from the 
things themselves, challenged by investigation, tested 
carefully by experiment. In the same way God will 
not have so many of those departed come back as tray- 
elers abroad, to be reporters and talkers of knowledge 
for us; for he wants to have us go directly to the 
subjects of duty—all subjects of a moral and spiritual 
nature—and learn what they are from themselves. Too 
much report and talk would ruin us, we should never 
know any thing at first hand, if we were all the while 
obtruded upon by revelations of message and story. 
Real conviction goes before talk, and is grounded in the 
soul’s own thinking of subjects and questions them- 
selves. Real faith is not something talked into us, but 
a most inward perception of that which is inwardly re- 
vealed. Real principle comes, not after society and 
social communication, but goes before them rather, 
certifying immortality and heaven and future society for 
itself. I think we know more of the grand world- 
future before us from Paul’s handlings of the great 
truths in his written epistles, contriving how to get 


OF NON-INIERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 181 


them based in thought and verified by it, than we should 
from the reports he might give us of his experience, in 
case he should return. The very excitement he would 
raise by his testimonies might render us less capable of 
understanding what is in the subjects themselves. In- 
deed, there probably could not be a greater hinderance 
to the sober and rationally solid convictions of duty and 
religion, than to have all the glorified spirits of the 
upper world crowding about us in verbal talk and testi- 
mony. 

It is also another and very great consideration, as 
regards the moral uses of non-intercourse established 
between worlds, that it shuts away the lighter, less ca- 
pable modes of benefit, with a view to put us more com- 
pletely in the power of such as have greater competency. 
There is, for example, no really competent revelator for 
a soul but God himself, and this is exactly the revela- 
tion that he undertakes to give. Saints coming back 
could only report what they have seen; but God, by 
his all-present Spirit, is able to be a presence of truth 
itself in the secret chambers of the mind; to blazon him- 
self and his counsel and his feeling and all that belongs 
to his eternity in the inner sense itself. To let the soul 
get occupied, therefore, with much talk, and heated by 
the very dear society of so many glorious strange- 
comers, would be to inflict upon it a very great loss. 
To be still with God and only hear him whisper sig- 
nifies a great deal more. Such kind of knowledge is 
not talked into the soul, but thought into it. There is 
no clatter in it drowning the sense, but it is born from 


182 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


within, out of God’s deep silence. That silence, there 
fore, is kept for us, undisturbed by voices and oracular 
spirits, who might rather confound than teach by their 
tuo friendly interruptions. It is not denied, in this 
manner, that we really want all that we regret the not 
having in our state of non-intercourse with the departed ; 
it is only assumed that God himself can be, and will be, 
a more sufficiently, deeply informing power. They 
could only externalize something in words: he can work 
convictions, knowledges, presentiments, that shall be 
inward states. Living in our sensuous habit, we perhaps 
think otherwise, and therefore wish that spirits from the 
other world might come and talk with us; but the 
very reason why they do not is that, having the eternal 
Father himself with us, their stories in our ears would be 
only a feeble impertinence. 

Still, it will be imagined perhaps that the one great 
subject of immortality would be set in evidence by 
the report of departed spirits, as it could not by any 
divine impressions or informing revealments within. 
This exactly is the claim put forward so often by our 
necromantic gospelers. Before, they could not, as 
they tell us, believe any thing about this matter of im- 
mortality ; they lived in the dark, and could only think 
of death as a lapse into nothingness. Now they know 
that there is a future state; friends whom they loved 
have come back to them and told them all about their 
new experience. Thank God, they are sure of some 
thing now beyond this life, and the condition they are 
in borders, they will say, on ravishment itself. Now, 


OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 183 


the simple answer to be made here is, that the continent 
they have discovered is a real continent, only not more 
real than it would be if it had been sooner discovered, 
in God’s more genuine, less superficial way. Have they 
not some reason still to doubt the necromantic oracles ; 
and is not the very close approach they have made to 
jugglery a rather uncomfortable source of evidence for 
a truth so serious and sublime? Suppose, instead, they 
had simply let their vast religious nature open itself to 
God’s full movement within, and that so they had 
become conscious of God himself, knowing and receiv- 
ing him by his immediate revelation. What is that 
consciousness of God but an implied consciousness of 
immortality? And which is better, the soul itself 
awakened inwardly to the sense of its own inborn 
eternity, or the soul put on thinking itself immortal by 
the verbal message of friends who are now beyond the 
gulf speling out their reports, by such tokens perhaps 
as will make up an evidence without much help of 
dignity? It is certainly most strange that men wil’ 
go so far, and even strain their faculty under suck 
prodigious tricks of charlatanism, to make out the 
confidence of immortality, when it is even natural 
to them as their breath, and would never be doubted 
for a moment, if they could consent to simply be 
as in God—apart from whom, as the complement 
and divine light of their spirit, they have no more 
real possibility of being, than a day without the sun. 
Having eyes to see the houses on the other side 
of the river, is it incredible that such houses exist, til’ 


184 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


the occupants themselves come over and tell us that 
they do? 

Our argument here is summed up in the fact that 
God himself is teacher enough, a teacher indispensable 
and really more effective, when interruptions of talk 
and irruptions of talkers, from the unseen world, are 
shut away. And yet there isa certain ground of reason, 
I must also concede, for the desire we have to receive 
sensible visitations, and visitors appearing to the senses, 
from the unseen world. As neglectors of God we live in 
the senses, and get stalled in the senses; so that final- 
‘your chief inlets appear to be there, and we scarcely 
make out the reality of any thing which does not meet 
us in some visible shape or audible accent. Christ, 
therefore, came to be incarnate among us, and to be 
that revelation of God in the flesh, that is required by 
the shutting up of our higher modes of perception. 
He comes down from above, just as we are wishing 
often that our departed friends might come, wondering 
in much sadness thatthey do not. He brings all knowl- 
edge of the worlds unseen with him, and even the glory 
that he had with the Father before the world was. He 
knows more about the great future than all the dead 
that have ever died, and, what is more, he understands 
exactly what we most want to know, and he can tell 
it so as to put more real evidence into it, than their 
whole cloud of witnesses testifying together. He is 
visible as we can wish him to be, audible as visible; 
nay, he is so completely one with us in our human 
society, that we count him a man, and think we have 


OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 185 


the table of his human genealogy. By this act God 
means to comfort us, in just that sensuous want, which 
puts us on complaining of the non-intercourse act that 
fences us in. And the design is to recall us by a visit 
ation that shall enter him back, and enter his unseen 
kingdom back into souls, by the sense thus awakened. 
But not even he must stay too long. Three short years 
were the limit of his public appearing, and he declared 
himself that it was expedient, or practically best for him 
_ to go away and let the Comforter, or unseen Father, 
come into his place and be his own immediate witness. 
If, then, it would not do for him to stay longer, if it 
would rather put us under the senses and sensuous evi- 
dences, than help us up through them, how much great- 
er damage will it do us to have departed friends rush- 
ing back upon us, displacing him by their multitude, 
and the merely curious matters of their personal story, 
and holding us back from God’s internal teaching, by 
the hum of so many voices filling the air about us. If 
we want the visible, as to a certain very limited extent 
we do, are these multitudes going to add any thing to 
Christ? Is he not a witness more significant than they 
all? Is he not as truly from their unseen world? Is 
there not more light in him and more future than they 
have everseen? And when they come to thrust them- 
selves in between us and him, what are they buta 
hinderance to our benefit in him? The very thing we 
want in them is given us in him, in a form so simple 
and pure and grandly concentrated, that their petty 
figures come upon the stage only to confound our at- 


186 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


tention and tempt the weakness of our curiosity. Pro 
cw], procul, este ! 

We discover in this manner that we do not have our 
state of non-intercourse established, because no such 
intercourse with the unseen world could be allowed, but 
because we have it already provided, in a way so im- 
pressive, that we can not afford to be taken off from it, 
or to have our attention divided. The next best thing, 
if there were no Christ in the world, might be to have 
the good souls flocking back as birds of passage, but it 
would not do for them, in such a case, to stay for a sin- 
gle half week; for the tumult of mind they would raise 
must very shortly make it expedient for them to go 
away, and leave us more to our God-instructed 
thoughts, and the deep-set ineradicable convictions of 
our religious mind. 

I will only add in closing, to prevent ried 
ing, that our desire to know the good condition of our 
friends, and to have the sense of their company for its 
own sake, is a natural desire, and seems to be graciously 
provided for. I have spoken already of the revelations 
or open states of access, that are possibly implied in 
congenial affinities. This open state in us appears to 
be that opening of heaven of which Christ speaks, 
declariyg that the angels of God shall be distinguished 
ascending and descending through it. It is the nature 
of every mind set open by good, to have the commerce 
and felt presence of all the good. They will not come 
to the senses, or speak with us by their voices, but 
there will be a sense of their company unseen, and 


OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 187 


their friendly help. They will be nigh in sacred power, 
as a kind of good possession, proving their friendship 
and flavoring the mind with their peace. In this man- 
ner we are permitted a most real society with them, 
such as comforts our external separation, and takes 
away the pangs of our unreasonable sorrow. Any thing 
more, or different from this, it is very clear, would 
rather, work our detriment than our benefit. 


IX. 
OF WINTER. 


fr is most remarkable that we have, in our winter, a 
whole season of the year that bears a- look of unbe- 
nignity. We can not say or think that God is cold 
here to his children, but no reverence can hide it from 
us, in these winter months of the year, that his physical 
treatment is fearfully chill and severe. A pitiless,stern 
aspect rests upon the world. The forests stand brown 
and bare. There is no song in their tops; they only 
roar and crackle to the blast in their frozen branches. 
Lake and river bellow to the winds afar, as if monsters 
shut under by the freezing were tearing to be free. 
The world’s body is not dressed, but shrouded rather, 
looking all the colder that we see it in a laying out of 
white, unflushed by mortal sympathy. God’s tender- 
ness appears to be quite shut away, or shut in, by his 
cold. The animals stand crouching in their yards, or 
under copse or wall, holding their heads low to the 
storm, as if missing God’s pity init. The little child 
whom Christ would have taken up so fondly in his 
arms gets stalled in the snows, and when his hands are 
freezing screams imploringly for help, but help is 
nowhere, and God’s unpitying cold goes on to freeze 
him as remorselessly as if he were a man. The trav 


OF WINTER. 189 


eler is overtaken at night on the prairie, by a howling, 
wildly driving storm; all trace of a road is gone; his 
point of direction is lost, and he drives still on, still 
round and round, passing more than once quite near 
the light which his wife has set in her window. She is 
praying that God will spare him; he himself is pray- 
ing that God will spare him for her dear sake and his 
children’s; but it is as if the prayers themselves were 
falling under the snow—two days afterward he and his 
exhausted team are found upright and stiff in a snow- 
bed miles away. 

Physically speaking, this is the picture of God’s win- 
ter. Does it represent him? Certainly it does in some 
true sense, though not in any such general and com- 
plete sense as to yield a just conception of him. Many 
of God’s doings and appointments do not represent his 
feeling or disposition, but they only represent the more 
truly his counsel, his purpose, his ends of discipline, his 
modes of compelling industry, begetting reflection, set- 
ting fast habits of attention, consolidating attributes of 
strength that are wanted to compose a manly character. 
In this manner we shall see that God is represented 
tather by the moral uses of winter, than by winter 
itself. Turning our thoughts in this direction then, we 
shall find enough to satisfy us; nay, we shall see the 
benignity of God unfolded here, if not more tenderly, 
yet more convincingly, than in any of the softer seasons 
of the year. 

Some persons have thought that God would have 
shown his goodness more perfectly, if he had planned 


190 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


to omit the winter altogether. Thus, if he had made 
the world a eylinder instead of a sphere, setting its 
axis in the same line, he would have given us a per- 
fectly equal season, they say, up to the very ends of 
the cylinder, throughout the year. To urge the incon- 
venience in such a case, of an endwise attraction, 
balancing itself at the center, and growing stronger 
each way from the center, is probably unnecessary. 
But if all the waters and the atmosphere must be slid- 
ing down toward the mid-circle or equator, if the people 
farther north and south must be living thus on a stair- 
way, and climbing it with heavier lift, as they approach 
the ends, there to find themselves on a mountain 4,000 
miles high, these and the other consequent incon- 
veniences—breathing without air, and cooking without 
fire, and cultivating growths without ever a possibil- 
ity of rain—might be many times greater than to 
have a winter. Nine-tenths of the cylinder would be 
a desert. The less we amuse ourselves by such kind 
of suggestions, and the more steadily we set ourselves 
to look after the moral benefits designed for us in the 
ordinance of winter as it is, the better satisfaction shall 
we obtain. 

First of all, then, we need to observe that it may be 
a very great point for us to have some whole season, or 
considerable department of our life, so ordered as to 
show that God’s beneficence is not always concerned, 
of course, in the promotion of physical ends. The 
supreme utilities with us are physical, and we look to 
see God planning every thing to serve the ends we 


OF WINTER. 191 


ealue, viz., physical ends—in that prcving his benefi- 
éence. Even Dr. Paley himself, who ought to make 
some principal account of ends and uses more religious, 
falls into the way of the general world-worship, con- 
triving always to show how this or that fulfills some 
end or use within the compass of nature itself; as when 
beasts of prey or venom are shown to have their use, 
not morally, but in keeping down the over-multiplica- 
tion of beasts. Raising this kind of argument, we. 
should have it on hand to show the beneficence of 
winter, by the mere physical ends and uses it serves, 
and that might not be easy. Do animals and children 
grow faster because of the cold? Do we make up our 
supplies more easily, for having a whole third part of 
the year given up to consumption, while producing 
nothing? Is the pasture more sufficient, for lying 
dead under the snow a full third part of the year? 
Are the roads more advantageous that they are made 
impassable ?—the rivers and lakes that they are put 
under embargo by ice? Are the rocks and trees that 
are rifted by frost made any the better for it? Is the 
landscape improved by stripping it? Do the howling 
storms of winter cherish any thing fruitful or kill any 
thing noxious? The remarkable thing here, in this 
matter of winter, is that, as far as we can see, almost 
no single end of our mere physical life is at all ad- 
vanced by it. It is as if God took us off here into a 
field, where nothing is done for physical ends, to show 
us on how large a scale he builds, and governs, and 
works, for ends that are superior, and even such as lie 


i ht oe 


192 MORAL USBS OF DARK THINGS. 


beyond the world itself. He does it more or less, some- 
times here and sometimes there, in the other seasons 
of the year; but here he does it, as it were by system, 
on the largest scale possible; calling us to observe 
that he has other, higher ends, beyond all terms of 
mere physical beneficence. It may be that we do not 
consciously take up any such conclusion, by a distinct 
intellectual recognition. But we are thrown, practi- 
cally, into a state of moral impression that corresponds. 
Our God is not a summer God only, but a winter God, 
ruling with stout emphasis, and caring visibly less for 
all mere comfort, than for the grand prerogatives and 
rigors of principle. The immense moral benefit of 
such impressions can not easily be over-estimated. It 
does not show us all God’s contrivances in the creation, 
_ tapering off into some mere physical use, but it shows 
him dropping out of sight, and, as it were, forgetting 
all physical uses, for whole months in the year, to bring 
on the other, higher uses that relate more especially to 
character and worlds beyond the world. 

It has not escaped the notice of physicians and phy- 
siologists, that winter effects a marked change in our 
bodily habit and temperament. The diseases are gen- 
erally of a different type, and health itself is a different 
experience. In summer the senses are more awake, 
and the body has free communication with nature 
through every gate and pore of the skin. Im the 
winter these gates are closed, and the vital force re- 
treats to its cell, to fan the fires and sustain’ the inter- 
nal heat, by extra exertion there. We fold our cloak 


OF WINTER. 193 


instinctively about us, and ask to be separated from 
nature by walls that are impervious. It is impossible 
that so great a change should not powerfully affect the 
tone and temperament of the mind—a fact which many 
have not failed to observe. We have thus a summer 
mind and a winter mind. The distinction is not as 
wide as between the state of sleep and the waking 
state. Neither is it any way analogous, and yet it is 
not less real. The mind works differently and has dif- 
ferent proclivities in the winter. It is less given up to 
sensation—it is even fighting off sensation a great part 
of the time. Passion is moderated and keyed more 
closely in the terms of order and reason. The delecta- 
tions and delicate pleasures of summer life are farther 
off, and as much less desired. In a perpetual summer 
life, as in the tropics, they all but macerate the soul’s 
capacities ; but where there is a good interspersing of 
winter habit, a more rugged and more distinctly moral 
temperament is induced. The mind has a closer aftinity 
with moral subjects, thinks responsibility with more of 
traverse and high understanding, and puts itself down 
upon all great questions of religion, with more of 
appetite and a steadier mastership. 

The contrast observable here between summer and 
winter life, in respect to the habit or capacity of re- 
flection, is specially remarkable. Self-indulgence, 
luxury, and a free bathing of sensation in the world’s 
temperatures and odors make soft motive for us in the 
summer, and lull us in a softening element. We seek 


the out-door shade and open air, and the motion of our 
9 


14 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 


Leing is outward, away from its own centre. The 
songs of the morning are music in our ear. The air is 
laden with incense. Scenes of beauty open to the eye, 
and we fill ourselves all day with images of freshness 
and life. All which is of the highest use—it is even 
necessary to the furniture of the mind. But it requires 
a.time of reflection afterward, to enable us to realize 
the moral benefits prepared. After the mind has re- 
ceived the summer into its storehouse, then it wants 
the winter, as a time wherein to review and con over 
its stores. Then let the summer wane, and the autum- 
nal frost begin to whiten the plain. Let the songs be 
hushed, the verdure fall off, and the scented air breathe 
only cold. Let the snows spread their blanket over 
the dead world, and the wintry blasts howl vengefully 
and wild. Now the senses lose their objects, and the 
man, not as being moved inwardly, but frost-nipped 
rather without, gathers in his mind to reflection. And 
there he finds gathered in also all the images of the 
creation, himself among them present also to himself. 
Their meanings, monitions, suggestions, and the matter- 
forms of thought there are in them, throng in to his aid. 
He hears the whispers of his conscience, and thinks of 
other worlds. Every prospect without forbidding and 
desolate, and the in-door fire more attractive in hig 
evenings than any walk abroad, he is shut up, in a 
sense, even wontedly, to his chamber, and to thoughts 
that relate to his own being and well-being. If he ever 
cogently and closely thinks, it will probably be now. 
If he is ever seriously bent to the very highest concern- 


OF WINTER. 195 


ments of his nature, he is likely to be 30 now. There 
is more of tone in his moral perceptions than at other 
times. Truth is seen more clearly, and his soul rings 
like a bell under its touch, because he is undiverted by 
things without, and thought is single in its action. 
Now, it is well understood that the mind never 
attains to great intellectual strength without first form- 
ing a habit of reflection. And the same is necessary to 
a vigorous pronouncement of the moral man—the con- 
science, the spiritual emotions, and the religious aspi- 
rations. Hence the well-known superficiality and the 
great intellectual and moral dearth of the tropical cli- 
mates. Having no winter, they have no capacity of 
deep, well-invigorated reflection, and no firm condensa- 
tion of thoughtful temperament. Their moral nature 
especially wants the true frigorific tension of a well 
wintered life and experience. For it is often observed, 
partly because the habit is more reflective, and partly 
for other reasons, that men have a stronger sense of 
principles in winter, than at any other time. They see 
them invested with a certain rigor and severity, like 
the season itself. Or, perhaps, without making any 
such comparison, they do, by a certain force of associa- 
tion, behold them, as they do the trunks of the forest, 
standing in their pure anatomy, curtained by no garni- 
ture of leaves, and stretching their bare, stiff limbs to 
the sky. Hence the contrast between tropical con- 
sciences, which are out-door, self-indulgent, unpro- 
nouncing consciences, and those which have been 
trained *n the more rugged and severe climes of the 


196 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


North. Who tl.at understands the moral efheacy of 
climates would undertake to form a Scotch people, ot 
New England people, as to the sense of principles, in 
either Central America or Jamaica? 

In the same way, we are made more conscious of 
our moral and religious wants in the winter, than we are 
in the softer, balmier seasons. If we can judge from 
the feeding of the swine on the ripened products of the 
year, the parable of the prodigal son is a winter par- 
able in its date. He came also to himself, and began 
to be in want, because it was a time of short allowance. — 
The intimation therefore is, that the sense of guilt and 
hunger in the moral nature is the needed precondition 
of all highest spiritual good; and when but in the 
winter shall this necessary sense of want be wakened? 
Let every thing about the man be an image of the 
dearth and coldness of a cold heart. Surround him 
with winter as a counterpart to the winter of the mind. 
Cut him off from the diversions and halfsatisfactions 
of his summer pleasures, take away the sceneries and 
prospects that relieve the tedium of an empty heart. 
Shut him up to himself, leaving no resource, save what 
he finds in himself. And then, if ever, he will be likely 
to feel the stir of those sublime, everlasting wants, that 
put all moral natures reaching after God. In this 
matter, it is not the question simply, what a cold, blank 
soul may be put on thinking, by the experiences and 
sceneries of winter. We have a great many gospelings 
that do not come to thonght, or work by thought at all, 
but only by the states or impressions they beget in 


OF WINTER. 197 


ways more immediate; even as hymns do not take our 
head by their mere creed matter, but play themselves 
straightway into sentiments. And so it is that God’s 
great ordinance of snow—the blank of it, the white of 
it, and the cold, and the readiness to be dissolved and 
pass away—is just that power on human feeling most 
profoundly adapted to the fit movement of the soul’s 
immortal want. It is a kind of scenery felt to be both 
congenial and chill; answering faithfully to the dreary 
chill of hunger that pinches the bosom within. 
Analogous to this effect of winter and closely related, 
is the fact that we are more capable of realizing invisible 
sceneries and worlds in the winter, than at any other 
time. God is more vividly imaged to the mind, we 
can not but admit, in the sceneries, and showers, and 
dews of summer. It appears to be intimated also, that 
our paradise will have tropical attractions, yielding 
twelve manner of fruits—a fruit every month—but the 
time to realize these invisible things of God and his 
paradise is when a pall is thrown over things visible 
that have a resemblance. Thus it would be very un- 
skillful if any one, having it for his problem how to 
produce the most vivid impression of the beauties of 
paradise—the river clear as crystal, the golden sands, 
the trees of life blooming fast by the river—were to 
choose thé time when spring is bursting into leaf and 
flower, and the odors are floating, and the music warb- 
ling on the air. In that case he will only raise an im- 
pression that the good world’s delectations are about on 
@ par with our present, which does not after all appear 


198 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 


to be very superlatively blessed ; whereas, if he should 
rather choose the dreary and bleak winter, when the 
creation is desolate and bare, he would call on our im- 
aginations to paint the picture, and be sure that they 
would make it blessed above all fact—as superlatively 
blessed as it need be. It must also be remembered that 
the invisible things of religion will be just as much 
more real in the winter, as the want of them is more 
impressively felt; as much more real as their princi- 
ples are more distinctly apprehended; as much more 
real as the power of thought is more separated from the 
distractions of the senses. 

It is also another very grand moral advantage of 
winter, that the will of man, or the voluntary power of 
his nature, becomes more erect, more vigorously attent 
and determinate, under that kind of experience. One 
of the most remarkable distinctions of the men of tropi- 
cal climates is that they seem to have no will; that is, 
no such steadiness and persistent grasp of will, as 
amounts to a capacity of high resolve and determinate 
action. They bask, they float, they are delicate and 
sensitive, but far too inefficient commonly for any de- 
cisive kind of action. The nearest approach they make 
to it is in their gustiness and the tempest-rage of their 
passion ; but here the very thing most wanting is a will 
that has force enough to master their impulse, and 
steady their self-government. To breast oppositions, 
stem currents, fight causes, resolve on changes or 
amendments, rise above misfortunes, seems impossible, 
How many tropically-nurtured martyrs have we ever 


OF WINTER. 199 


heard of? And weneed not gy:t our zone te learn the 
reason. Who of «s does n@ observe that, in the heat 
of summer he is iang"¢, faint, averse to resolution. 
We even call the sum wer the languid season. We also 
speak of the bracing winter, by which we mean that we 
have nerve to do, determine, plan, withstand, endure— 
in a word, that we have now a new installment of will, 
and so of practical energy. Now, therefore, is the time 
when we shall be girded to the closest mental attention, 
and shall most distinctly comprehend our own moral 
state and want. And what we discover we shall set 
ourselves in firmest resolution to do; to mend our de- 
fects, renounce our sins, revolutionize our habits, take 
up our crosses, enter into new duties and hopes, and 
pluck up courage, in God’s help, to begin a new and a 
better life. All this we may do in the summer, it is 
true; but weare far more likely to do it in the winter, 
or in the neighboring season of spring, when the tonic 
force of one is passing into the softening genialitieg of 
the other. 

We shall also discover, what will be more impressi-+c 
to many, that winter has a practical effect, in a large 
way, on the economic and social conditions of life, that 
is in the highest degree beneficial to character. Winter 
is not commonly productive, but is rather a time of ex- 
penditure. And in this way it impels, by the most 
atringent motive possible, to habits of industry and 
providence, which are the acknowledged conservators 
and securities of character. A few of the trades find 
their harvest-time in the winter, but, for the greater 


200 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


part of society, summer is the productive season. And 
they do well if they do not consume in the winter all 
which their summer produces. As production falls off 
or diminishes, expenditure 1s, by the same causes, en 
larged. The comfort of the house 1s to be maintained 
by artificial heat, which makes a large expense. The 
body requires heavier, more expensive clothing. It 
also requires a larger quantity of more substantial food 
to sustain its internal heat. Meantime the herds of 
domestic animals are kept in life through the winter by 
generous supplies, which it has cost many acres of land 
and whole months of labor to provide. Income is no- 
where; out-go is the general law. And then, when the 
spring and summer return, the same winter stock is to 
be provided over again for the inevitable expenditure. 
Every thing is hung on providence, and the man who 
will not provide can not live. He must bow himself to 
industry, and then what he creates he must store, and 
keep in careful husbandry. And so, by the very drill 
of life, he is trained to a cautionary, fore-looking habit. 
He is no such man as he would be, if nature were pour- 
ing out her bounties to him all the year. And as he 
provides for the winter, carefully gathering and storing 
what will stock his comfort, it will be strange, if his 
very habit does not sometimes set him on forecasting 
the wants and necessities of a life beyond life. And 
then, having gotten this also provided, he will have it 
in his heart to borrow a larger lesson from the winter, 
He will be no more churlish, or barren of gratitude, in 
so much of expenditure; but seeing that God gives for 


OF WINTER. 201 


expenditure, and that in this all his gifts have their 
value, he will set his fireside comforts in contrast with 
the bleak and dreary desolations around him, and will 
thank God, with a full and tender heart, for the supplies 
of his year. His industry, making suit to God as to 
the soil and the seasons, and his temperate life-care in 
the provisioning of his wants, are in one view a drill, 
in anothera hymn. We might think that the people 
of a tropical climate would, of course, be more religiously 
bent, and more grateful. And yet they are likely to 
even forget what gratitude means. They receive their 
blessings as a thing of course, and being occupied 
always with receiving, and having no separate time of 
use and expenditure, their blind selfish habit runs them 
-by all remembrance even of the giver. Nature pours 
out her flood upon them, and they receive it as they 
receive the air, without any sense of its value, or the 
bounty which it signifies. 

The moral benefit of winter is also great, super- 
eminently great, in the contributions it makes to home- 
life, and the fine moral serenities of a close family state. 
Home is a northern word, not found in the languages 
of the tropical nations. Living out of doors, reclining 
under shades, or strolling here and there at any time 
of day or night for the whole year, families are less 
regularly gathered into a home circle, or any thing 
which can be called domestic proximity. They take 
the habit of the herds, in part, and their passions are 
as much loosened as their domestic ties. It is only at 
the hearth where the winter fire is kindled, and the 

oF 


202 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


family is gathered into close companionship, that father 
hood and motherhood, and the other tender relation- 
ships, become bonds of unity and consciously felt con- 
cern. A whole half-year spent at the hearth—morn- 
ings there begun with prayer, long evenings enlivened 
by mutual society and common studies, books opening 
their treasures, games their diversions—this it is that 
condenses a home. Nothing can buy it or bring it to 
pass, without help of winter as the prime condition. 
A “ Cotter’s Saturday Night ” in the tropics! who can 
imagine it? Winter then, we are to see, is that best 
educator, in whose school spring all the thousand name- 
less influences that guard the life, strengthen its princi- 
ples, and save its affections from vagrancy and dissi 
pation. There is no moral influence not immediately 
religious that is so essential to virtue and religion, as 
this most untropical institution that we call a home. 
Thus far we have been occupied in tracing certain 
particular results of character operated by winter cli- 
mates. I wish it were possible, taking a different way, 
to sketch the many impressive scenes or occasions of 
winter, that are working always, perhaps unobserved, 
results not less important. As I can name only two or 
three, notice, for one, the almost religious impression 
of the winter storms. The tropical storms, such as the 
hurricane of our southern seas, and the cyclone of the 
eastern, are far more violent—so violent or furious as 
to be simply terrible, and to leave no moral impression 
at all. But our winter storm gathers up its force more 
thoughtfully, as if moving only great instigations; 


OF WINTER. 203 


driving steadily on, with a roar that is, at once, the 
voice of power and of cold. We imagine certain 
rigors of eternal majesty in the sound, hearing it with 
only the deeper, more considerate awe, that we appre 
hend no damage or danger from it. The driven snow- 
dust fills the air and whitens on the window-panes, so 
that seeing nothing without, we can only sit by our fire 
and hear the commotion; save that we feel the jar of 
it also now and then, when the gusty shocks of broad- 
side pressure butt upon the house. Waking in the 
night, when the storm is at its highest pitch of em- 
phasis, we meditate composedly, yet how distinctly, 
God, who saith to the snow, “ Be thou on the earth,” 
and by such voice of majesty executes his word. The 
storm is only such as we have seen many times, and 
are likely again to see more than once before the spring 
arrives, and therefore we think less of it than we 
should. And yet, if we recall our impressions, we per- 
ceive that under this same winter-piece, performed by 
God’s aérial orchestra, we have had our soul in vibra- 
tion, as never under any combinations of art and 
instrument and voice, that have won the greatest ap- 
plause. It had no rhythm, it was not a movement of 
time and harmony, but it was a grand chromatic of 
the creation, that we felt all through, heaving out our 
soul in tremulous commotion before God. It is impos- 
sible that such experiences should not have a powerfully 
predisposing effect in our capacities for religion. 
Consider also the moral value of winter as a time for 
charity. In the summer, God pours out his bounty so 


204 MORAL USES OF DARK ‘SHINGS. 


freely that even the idle and improvident will scarcely 
miss their needed supply. Not even the invalid will 
often suffer. In the winter he withholds, that we may 
so far take his place, and seek out the beneficiaries, and 
dispense the benefactions of Providence, forhim. To 
prepare a way of suffering, in order to prepare oc- 
casions for charity, would, of course, be a harsh and 
very unequal method of beneficence. If that were all, 
it would only be a sacrifice of one class, to promote the 
virtues of another. But where there is much idleness 
and vice, there ought to be much suffering, and it ap- 
pears to be even a fault of the tropics that they do not 
bring suffering enough. It would be much better, as 
far as we can judge, if the profligate and worthless 
were more severely handled ; for the examples of retri 
bution would be more impressive, and the cogent forms 
of misery would furnish appeals of charity, sufficiently 
strong and frequent to make it one of the common ha- 
manities. In this respect the winter climates have a 
great advantage. They have the further advantage 
that the conditions of hunger and cold authenticate 
themselves. If there is no fire, the lack can be seen. 
If there is no sufficient covering, the fact is not difficult 
to be distinguished. The poor child found in rags, 
asking bread, and saying by his piteous, crouching look, 
“Who can stand before His cold?’ wants no cer- 
tificate. In the howling cold of the night, sheltered in 
our warm, comfortably-tempered chamber, we have 
reason enough to be thinking of the poor, uncovered, 
shivering creatures not far off, and we can certainly 


OF WINTER. 205 


find them to-morrow. Some of us, it may be, do not 
much value these tender humanities and really divine 
ministries. We dispatch them sometimes gruffly, it 
may be, and without the tenderness, and yet the moral 
benefit we all receive is greater than we can estimate— 
all the greater, of course, when we learn to claim our 
privilege in such offices of mercy and true brother- 
hood. 

I will name one other occasion, or contingency of 
winter, that sometimes takes a wonderfully strong hold 
of our religious instinct, and often produces effects 
more decisive than we trace ourselves. I speak of our 
winter funerals. To bury a friend in winter is a kind 
of trial that connects strange inward commotions of 
feeling which it is difficult to master. We have cleared 
away the snow and hewn a passage down through the 
solid pavement of the frost, and there, in that inhos- 
pitable place, we come to bury our departed; be 
it child, or wife, or mother, or much loved friend. 
Our heart shudders, in convulsive chill, at the forlorn 
last offices we are come to perform. While our feeling 
is protesting, the solemnity, so called, goes on, and 
before we have gotten our own consent, the “tribute 
of respect” is ended. The frozen chips of earth, 
loosened again by blows, are piled on the loved one’s 
rest, and we turn to go. “ Will it storm to-night? 
The wind, alas! is howling even now in the trees, and 
the sleeting is already begun. O God, it shall not be! 
We were going to be fools, we see, but now the spell is 
broken. Our departed is not in that hole, and we 


206 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


scorn to say our farewell over it! Let the snows fall 
heavy, if they will, and the winds rage pitiless and 
wild above, ours it shall be to thank thee, Father, Lord 
of the warmer clime, that our dead one lives with 
thee.” Practically almost nothing will more surely 
compel a faith in immortality, even if one chances to 
be unbelieving, than to bury a friend in the winter. 
And, as a matter of fact, it is not in the fresh, out- 
bursting life of the spring, or in any softer season of 
the year, that we think of immortality with half the 
tension that we do at the winter funerals. We ask it 
instinctively, as we do a fire for the cold. 

We have it then, for our conclusion, that if we have 
some physical reason to complain of our harsh and 
rugged climate, morally speaking it stands well. Re- 
garding only personal and moral vigor, and the supreme 
interests of character, it is a climate thoroughly re- 
epectable, and is not a whit too severe. Many think it 
a great misfortune that our excellent fathers did not 
push their way farther south, at their landing, and seek 
out a softer and more genial clime. There is no greater 
folly, as facts most conclusively show. If there be any 
people on earth who have reason to accuse their climate, 
it is they who enjoy a perennial season of growth and 
verdure, and a soft and sunny sky throughout the year. 
There it is that mind also is soft, enervated by ease 
and luxury. There it is that eternity offers beauty and 
bloom to minds that can not be moved by their attrac- 
tion, and virtue her stern requirements to souls toe 
much relaxed by habits of ease and passion to be 


OF WINTER. 207 


girded by sentiments of high responsibility. After all, 
the best favors of God are those which take on shapes 
of rigor and necessity, and prepare the strongest 
hunger in us for the good of a world invisible. The 
advantages of the body are poor and mean compared 
with the advantages of character and religion. Under- 
standing thus our want, we shall thank God most for 
the frosts, and the snows, and the sleet, and the bleak 
winds, and the raw dank seasons interspacing the cold. 
We shall be like the trees coated in gems of ice and 
glittering in thankfulness before Him. For the winter 
of the body is, in some very true sense, the summer of 
the mind. What softer clime then shall the sons of 
New England envy—wading to their temples on the 
hills through wintry snows, gathered at their firesides 
in domestic mutualities and pleasures, trained to close 
economy and patient industry by the even balance of 
growth and expenditure, rugged in their virtues as in 
their experience of hardship, firm in their conscience, 
clear in their religious convictions, and knowing how 
to gild the rigors of time with glories of future ex- 
pectation. Who, again we ask, of all that bask 
in the warmth of skies more genial, have they to 
envy ¢ 

It is most remarkable, too, and a fair subject of con- 
gratulation, that the Christian sense of winter, if we 
should not rather say the Christian providence of 
times, makes an election of seasons that so nearly cor- 
responds with the choice, or good fortune, of our 
fathers ; for the great church days most consecrated by 


208 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


observances of religion are days in winter, and of early 
spring—such as the festivals of the Nativity and of 
Easter and the forty days of Lent, with others that 
might be named. Whether the institution of Lent is 
fixed in its particular season, because that is a time 
when mind is more congenially tempered for the Ligher 
meditations and severer exercises of religion, some 
perhaps may auestion, but any one can see that a Lent 
in July and August would have much less chance of 
the intended benefit. We may also observe that the 
time selected coincides, as nearly as may be, with the 
season of the year most commonly distinguished by 
what in other modes of church order, not observing 
Lent, are rather unhappily called revivals of religion. 
And it turns out in both modes alike, and for reasons 
that are really the same, that the winter becomes, in 
some practical and special sense, the harvest time of 
religion. It is so, not as many cavilers will say, 
because the Christian people have done up their bnsi- 
ness, and made their money, and, having nothing else 
to do, are going to do up their religion; but it is 
because the tonic force of winter gives a possibility of 
thought and mental tension, specially needed for the 
most resolute and really most earnest exercises of devo- 
tion. It is also a considerable advantage, that we love 
proximity in winter, and covet more easily the warmth 
of assemblies and of high social impulse. And since 
the Spirit of God has it as a law of divine wisdom, to 
work most powerfully in seasons that best work with 
him, what should we expect but that his widest move 


OF WINTER. 209 


ments of grace, whether called by one name or another, 
will be revealed in the times of winter? 

It follows, we must also observe, that we all have a 
gift of personal advantage in the winter that we can 
not afford to lose. Now is the time to meditate all our 
most serious concerns of life anew. If the main ques- 
tion is still unsettled, or unattended to, there is no other 
80 good time for a duty that requires so much of con- 
centration. If we have grown slack in our principles, 
now is the time to set them up and be ourselves set up 
in their company. If the fascinations of time have 
stolen us away from the invisible good, now is the time 
to set our gaze more steadfastly on it, when the good 
that is visible is frosted, and hid under snows from the 
sight. Now is the time to be rational and strong, to 
revise our mistakes, shake off our self-indulgences, 
prepare our charities, justify our friendships, shed a 
sacred influence over our families, set ourselves to the 
service of our country and our God, by whatever cost 
of sacrifice. Doing this, as we may, it will not much 
concern us, I think, if our flight should also be in the 
winter. 


x. 
OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUOL, 


Gon’s thought is beauty; and as he creates in the 
form of his thought, his creation must, we infer, repre- 
sent his beauty. The argument goes further; for as 
God’s mind is all-beautiful or infinite in beauty, so the 
world must be an infinitely beautiful world. And yet 
it visibly is not, but a great way from it. If we take 
up the opinion that it is, by no inference but only by 
reverence, still we cannot stop our eyes by reverence; 
and the moment we open them, we see as distinctly as 
we see any thing, that perfect beauty is not here. No 
matter if we recoil from such a conclusion, as one that 
takes away the possible proof of God’s existence, then 
that possible proof must go; for there is nothing more 
certainly discovered, than that we have immense dis- 
figurements, and objects and airs intensely disgustful, 
in the world’s composition. And, what is more, these 
uncomely or revolting elements in the picture are not 
incorporated by accident, or oversight, or some prece- 
dent necessity, but, as far as we can see, by deliberate 
purpose and plan. No animal, for example, is created 
by any thing less than a sovereign act; therefore, when 
we encounter buzzards and many beasts of prey, whe 


OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 211 


neither relish, nor will eat any thing which is not flavor- 
ed and thoroughly cooked by decomposition, this is their 
nature, we infer, the original instinct of their kind, and 
was just as truly created in them as their anatomy. 
These are facts which no possible gloss can hide, and 
they are thick sown among the sceneries, the odors and 
flowers, and all the blooming beauties of the world. 
What shall we make of them? A very difficult and 
immensely significant question. 

A different verdict is, I know, quite commonly ac- 
cepted. A great many religious writers volunteer it .as 
a point of reverence, without any thought of being 
critically responsible for it, and a great many poets 
and professed expounders of nature also speak as if it 
were a point to be taken by admission, that the works 
of God are in God’s beauty and exclude the possible 
right of qualification. They are so captivated by what 
they call nature, and luxuriate with such fondness in 
the poetical fervors kindled in their fancy by what 
they call his beauty, that they often disrelish and 
recoil from the revealed religion of the Scriptures, 
however beautifully or magnificently revealed, prefer- 
ring to indulge what they conceive to be a religion 
more tasteful; viz., the admiration of God as dis- 
covered in the natural objects around them. And yet, 
even such, without raising at all the question how far 
they are consistent in it, will be playing their criticism 
every hour on the defective sceneries, and the un- 
sigutly, disproportioned shapes of nature, showing that 
not even their superlatively tasteful religion is tasteful 


° 
212 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


enough to satisfy their own ideals. They quite agree 
with us still, that no bog, or swamp, or heath, or 
desert, or dead plain, or stagnant water, no slimy 
reptile, or carrion bird is a beautiful object. They 
plainly do not think a howling wilderness at all com- 
parable in beauty to a cultivated landscape; allowing 
without scruple, that nature from the hand of God 
requires to be retouched and finished by the hand of 
man. And whatever field of nature they find so 
drenched with water, or parched with drought, or 
pinched with cold, that no industry or art of man can 
improve it, they conceive to be unsightly, irredeemable 
waste. They have also what they call “foul days” 
and “nasty weather ;” and when they are able to say 
“it is a perfect day,” they mean that it is an excep- 
tional, uncommon, superlative day. 

So far, we all agree, however much or little we have 
. to say of the perfect beauty of nature. We discover 
disproportions and blemishes, we are annoyed by things 
distasteful, we suffer many disgusts. And we go so 
far in this involuntary criticism, that when we come to 
the human form itself, which is the noblest and choicest 
of all, we find no single member of the race that per- 
fectly fulfills our ideas of beauty—not even our utmost 
conceit can look in the glass, without thinking of some 
feature that might be greatly improved. And we are 
even accustomed to assume, without scruple, that con- 
sidering height, proportion of parts, perfection of single 
members, complexion, gait, posture, expression, nO man 
or woman ever existed, in whom the practiced eye 


OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 213 


could discover no blemish —no excess, or defect, or false 
conjunction. Hence it is steadily assumed as a first 
maxim of art, that the perfect beauty is not, but is to 
be, created. We do not say that all are deformed, and 
yet with the single qualification, “more or less,” it 
would hardly be an extravagance. Some limb is awry, 
some member too long or too short, some feature too 
sharp or too clumsy. Indeed, the remarkable thing is 
that, conceiving man, as we do, to be created in the 
image of God, we meet so very few persons, in the 
intercourse of life, that awaken at all, our sense of 
beauty. We have, in fact, a way of saying that a 
person is common, as denoting an unattractive, badly 
molded figure and look. 

I have been careful, it will be observed, in the mak- 
ing up of this picture, to give it in its softest, least 
exaggerated form. My object has not been to frame 
an impeachment of nature, but a respectful and suit- 
ably delicate representation rather. It would be easy 
to draw up specifications of scenes, and facts, and pro- 
cesses, that would make a hideously disagreeable, or 
even revolting picture, but the taste of one who should 
do it would probably suffer the principal infliction 
itself It would be as when a Jumbo occupies whole 
years of industry in molding a circumstantial and 
minutely particular representation of the horrible and 
disgusting charnel made ly the plague in the streets of 
Florence. It was bad enough that such a scene must 
be, as an event of Providence, but a great deal worse 
that any kind of art should labor at the picture, and 


214 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


work up the hideous details, by which it may be form- 
ally perpetuated. I prefer to take the milder, mildest 
possible conception of the uncomely and disgustfu 
matters in the field of nature; for we shall have 
enough to do, in that case, to make out an account of 
them sufficiently agreeable to satisfy us. 

Proceeding now in this endeavor, it will be neces 
sary ,— 

I. To dispose of certain solutions, or pretended solu- 
tions, which are either not permissible, or do not reach 
the mark. 

Thus it may be imagined that God does not like to 
be imprisoned in his own beauty, but prefers sometimes 
to assert his liberty, in creating things unshapely and 
wild; even as some human artist, who could easily con- 
ceive more beautiful things, chooses the less beautiful, 
with a view to certain humorous and grotesque effects, 
or to certain moral effects that depend on acts of merey 
to the lame, or leprous, or the outcast poor. But the 
point to be first noted here is that the artist is studying, 
nevertheless, in his choice, what will help him to com- 
mand effects most beautiful in the particular field or 
subject chosen. How far the dignity of God permits 
the supposition that he indulges the grotesque and dra- 
matic by-play of sentiment in this way need not here be 
discussed, for it is only a very small part of the un- 
sightly and hideous deformities of nature that can, by 
any possibility, be classed in that manner. They are 
too disgustful and repulsive, too dreadfully serious, to 
be thought of as contributions for dramatic sentiment 


OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 215 


of any kind. Besides, the disgustful and hideous points 
of nature are not given pictorially, but really. If the 
artist were not painting lepers or lunatics, but creating 
them, we should have a very different impression of his 
work. No advantage, in short, is to be gotten by this 
kind of argument. 

As little can it be said that there is no defect o1 
blemish in nature, but only in our own standards, or 
ideals of beauty. What then are standards and ideals 
but just what they are made to be, save that evil must 
be allowed to have wrought some corruption of our 
judgments and perceptions under them. The same is 
to be said of all our perceptions. We have as good rea- 
son to confide in our judgments of what is beautiful, or 
unbeautiful, or disgusting, as we have to confide in our 
judgments of perspective and color. And we know as 
well what is out of shape, or hideous, or disgustful, as 
we do that the sky is blue, or that snow is white, or 
that righteousness is right. If we can not trust our in- 
tuitive perceptions, there is nothing more for us to say. 
For aught that appears, disgusting odors are as good as 
perfumes, and deformities are the essence of beauty. 

As little can it be imagined that our distastes and 
condemnatory judgments are due to the lowness and 
perversity of our criticism; that we find blemishes be- 
cause it pleases our conceit to find them; that we meet 
disgusting objects, because we are fastidious enough to 
be disgusted by what is inherently beautiful; that we 
take a low-minded pleasure in gloating on deformities, 
and are too hasty, or short-sighted, to pierce the matters 


216 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


blamed, deeply enough to apprehend their real merit 
and dignity. Undoubtedly there is a possibility of just 
this perverse and nanseously absurd way of criticism. 
But when it is considered that all most rhapsodical 
admirers of nature as well as all most rigid devotees 
of science agree in the opinion that fault and blemish, 
and defect of color, and loathsomeness of look, are 
largely infused among the objects and scenes of nature, 
it will be as improbable as it can be, that all our dis- 
gusts are due to the distempers of our criticism. 
Neither can it be said, with any sufficient show of 
evidence, that the uncomely and distorted forms of 
nature were never created, but have resulted, since the 
creation, from uses that produced the distortion; that 
the giraffe, for example, has lifted his shoulders and 
spun out his enormous length of neck, by the habit of 
browsing on tree-tops; or that the elephant, having the 
enormous weight of his head to support, at the end of 
a neck proportionately long, became weary of the bur- 
den, and gradually drew in his neck, till it was short- 
ened; pushing out meantime the length of his mouth- 
piece, till it became a proboscis long enough to reach 
the ground and gather his supplies of food. We have 
a strangely disfigured race of fishes, comprising the 
halibut, the plaice, and the flounder. They swim flat- 
wise on their side, having their back-bone on one mar- 
gin, and their belly on the other, and their head so far 
twisted out of place, that a single eye stands up promi- 
nent and bold on the top, and the other eye is a little, 
nearly extinct organ, underneath. These creatures take 


OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 217 


their prey, it is said, by churning up the mud on the 
bottom of the ocean and letting it settle upon them for 
disguise, while they lie in perfect stillness under their 
chin cloak, waiting for some fish to be discovered, by 
their beetling eye, swimming directly over them. Then 
darting up their twisted mouth upon him, they have 
him for their prey. Now the question springs, at this 
point, whether these strangely distorted and deformed 
creatures were made as they are, or whether they have 
twisted themselves out of all symmetric figure by their 
practice? If there is some special cunning given them 
for this practice, then they were so far made for it, and 
for all the disfigurements they incur from it. And 
if it is not so, and as good cunning is given to all 
the other fishes of prey, why has no other family of 
fishes learned to set their trap in the same way? On 
the whole, very little can be made of this kind of argu- 
ment; and, partly for the reason that only a few of the 
malformations we meet have any thing to do with such 
physiological practices. The jungles, the swamps, the 
deserts, the putrid lakes, are malformed plainly by crea- 
tion, and fill a very much larger chapter. 

But it will be said, and often is said, that the deform- 
ities and disgusts of nature are all intended as reliefs, 
to set off the ornamentations and beauties. As there 
must be discords in music, light and shade in pictures, 
so there must be contrasts, in order to make up any 
really perfect landscape, or perfectly composed beauty 
in things not pertaining to landscape. This is really 


the most plausible account that can be given of the dis- 
10 


218 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


figured and distasteful things in nature. But there is 
no solid merit of reason in the solution, as we can easily 
see. Does any artist ever execute one corner of his 
picture badly, in order to bring out the beauty of his 
work in the other? What painter ever put a swamp 
or a desert in his picture, to heighten the pleasing 
effect of it? Such a thing may have been done, as all 
absurd things can be, but I happen never to have seen 
the instance. A reedy lake, or wide-spread shallow, 
such as the muskrat populations love to inhabit—who 
ever undertook to set off his landscape by putting it in 
the foreground, or middle-ground, or anywhere else ? 
What sculptor ever thought to make a leg or an arm 
more beautiful, by setting a deformed one with it, as we 
often see in the juxtapositions of nature? The need of 
contrasts in setting off the charms of things beautiful, 
is itself a false assumption. Such contrasts are com- 
monly painful. A park and a swamp, a group made 
up of hags and graces, gambols of life and decays of 
death—all such misconjunctions are offensive. Light 
and shade are a wholly different matter, operating not 
by contrast, but by the magic power of the sun, play- 
ing out, in both alike, the forms and colors of the 
scene it is painting. Things unlike, as rock and water, 
complement each other, not by contrast, but by joint 
contributions of beauty. Meantime all the unbeantiful 
stuff the world contains has abundance of contrasts in 
it; only it happens that they are so devoid of expres- 
sion, as to be simply wearisome because of their com- 
monness. Whole regions are too common to raise any 


OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 219 


thought of a landscape. Farms and localities are com. 
mon. Maultitudes of faces, abundantly unlike, are yet 
so meagre, and dry, and dreary, that we call them com- 
mon, and let them go. But it can not be imagined 
that these commonnesses help, as terms of contrast, te 
garnish any larger whole. They only whet our appe- 
tite for something better by starving us in what they 
are. 

Dismissing, then, all attempts to solve the deformi- 
ties and disgustful things of nature, on the footing of 
mere natural criticism, we come— 

II. To what is really the chief point of their signifi- 
cance; the moral uses they are fitted and appointed to 
serve. 

And the first of these I name is the broad, every 
where visible, token of retribution they show imprinted 
on the world. I do not undertake to say, that all these 
unsightly and disgustful things are deformities actually 
caused by the fact of wrong or transgression, appearing 
for the first time after it. The world was originally 
made, no doubt, for the occupant, to serve such uses as 
his moral training would require; and if it was prelud- 
ing his bad history long before he came, the disgustful 
tokens were none the less truly fruits of his wrong, than 
if they had appeared only afterward, as the literal 
effects of it. Tke medicines a traveler carries with him, 
when going into regions infested with plague, are none 
the less truly dictated by the plague than if they had 
been chosen after the symptoms appeared. And if any 
one shonld think that such a way of regarding the 


220 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


world’s deformities and disgusts might diminish or 
quite take away the impression of any retributive 
meaning in them, that impression will be cogently 
affirmed by seeing, every day, new-sprung deformities 
and disgusts every way correspondent, that are visibly 
penal reactions and retributive consequences of vicious 
conduct. When a once robust, handsomely formed, 
nobly commanding person, has it for his lot as a father, 
to look on a family of feeble, half-sized, chronically dis- 
eased, pitifully deformed children, it is only necessary 
to speak the word “licentiousness,” and we see at a 
glance by what kind of mill retribution is at work to 
make one class of deformities. Who that compares the 
unwieldy and coarse obesity of a gormandizer, and the 
swinish configurations of his face and mouth, with the 
fine elastic play of his figure and features before his 
habit was established, fails to see how surely retribution 
fits a beastly appetite with a beastly figure. We suffer 
no revulsion more painful than to look on the stupid 
unmeaningness and bloat and blear of a thoroughly 
besotted drinker, and it hardly seems a possibility, that 
a lump so disgusting can have been made, even by 
retribution itself, out of a person as finely molded, in a 
look of expression as attractive, as he is remembered to 
have worn but a very few years ago. And so it is in the 
whole moral department of life, where retribution is 
easting forms and figures, so to speak, for every sort of 
sin. ! 
If a man has no principles and thinks only of ap- 
pearances, the affectations he lives in will print them- 


OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 221 


selves on his face and make it an embodied lie. If one 
lives in cunning only, the foxy character creeps into 
his eye and motions, and we almost think the man is 
changing species. Hate, jealousy, petulance, miser- 
hood, envy—every sort of obliquity has its own dis- 
figurement. By so many mills kept running day and 
night retribution is at work, to manufacture deformities 
and disgusts. And this we see so often, growing so 
familiar with the story, that it becomes a general habit 
with us, to look on the disfigurements and disgusts of 
the world, as being somehow connected with wrong 
and its penal causations. 

Now, the immense value of this impression can not 
be over-estimated. It connects all evil with its fit 
tokens of expression. The races all march down their 
way carrying their own dishonored flags. The families 
have their own disfigurements and scars. There is no 
concealment ; every thing is out in visible shape, and 
is going to be. We could never have any just opinion 
of moral retribution as inexorably connected with 
moral conduct, unless these galleries, down which we 
go, were hung with just so many unsightly figures and 
objects of disgust. Sin will get fit discipline here only 
as it occupies the house it builds, looking on the forms 
it paints and catching in the air the scent of its own 
low practice. When we con over, indeed, the malfor- 
mations and disfigured shapes that are crowding about 
us here in such multitude, and confronting in such 
libelous airs the beauty of the Creator, we seem, at 
times, to have somehow missed ovr world; and yet 


fu oa 


222 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


there is all the beauty here there can be, and all there 
ought to be, unless there can be more of worth and less 
of wrong. If the house we live in humiliates our feel- 
ing, it does not sink us below the scale of our merit. 

A second moral advantage of the unbeautiful and 
often disgustful things of the world is closely related, 
and yet radically different; I speak of the representa- 
tional office they are designed to fill. We fall into a 
great mistake when we assume that nature and natural 
objects must represent the thoughts only and resources 
of the Creator. It may have been, nay, certainly was 
his purpose in them, that man should be represented 
to himself; or, what is the same thing, supplied with 
images to express his sentiments and thoughts. Lan- 
guage is a first necessary of existence, and everyone 
who knows what language is finds it bedded in 
physical types and images naturally significant, and 
prepared before-hand—even before they are vocally 
named—to express, by their figurative power, mental 
thoughts and ideas. And these being vocally named, 
no matter by what sound, become words that recall so 
many figures, and carry so many different kinds of 
expression. The physical heaven is height, purity, and 
order, and so the figure heaven signifies the state of the 
blessed. Ground is the prostrate, underfoot element, a 
figure thus to signify humility [humus]. Integers are 
wholes, hence integrity. All the words we get for the 
uses of mind and the expression of moral ideas are 
figures brought up thus out of nature, and made to 
pe the staple of our language And this is possible, 


OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 223 


simply because the objects of nature are relationally, 
or representationally, made; contrived, that is, to rep. 
resent our thoughts and help us figure ourselves tc 
ourselves and to one another. 

At this point we strike the question, what if there 
were no base, unbeautiful or disgustful things in the 
world ; what if every image were an image of God’s 
. beauty unmarred, every object cast in the molds of 
ideal order and unblemished life? Of course there is 
no language now to represent or figure wrong, bad 
character, vice, moral obliquity, or corruption; all 
because there is no representational matter, out of 
which figures to carry a bad impression can be drawn. 
Our language is good enough for all but the moral 
uses of our life, but here it is utterly wanting. And 
what benefit can we get in living, when we can not 
think, distinguish, express, or interpret, any single 
working of our disorder? The very thing now wanted, 
above every thing else, is a good supply of disfigure- 
ments, distortions, uncomely shapes, loathsomenesses, 
objects of aversion and disgust. Just all that differs 
the world now from what it would be,representing only 
God, is required for our sakes, to be the timber of a 
language that will serve our morally misshapen life, 
and permit us to think and talk of our condition as our 
truest good requires. Only so can we get such terms 
as these—vile, unclean, corrupt, polluted, rotten, lame, 
distorted, crabbed, venomous, distempered, revolting, 
loathsome, depraved, and five hundred others of the 
same class, all based in figures of deformity and dis- 


224 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


gust supplied by the unbeautiful things of nature. 
And any one can see that without these forms of 
language all the moral uses of life must fail. We 
should be scarcely more completely out of our element, 
if we were installed in some third heaven where we 
could not get bread for our bodies. 

Thirdly, it is a great moral advantage of the un- 
sightly things, that they put us endeavoring after 
improvements. Nature we say is rough and wild, 
valuable mainly as a good possibility given for the pro- 
duction of something better. And so, without scruple, 
we fall to work in ways of culture and amendment, to 
improve what the Creator’s hand has left us. We 
expect to make finer growths, fewer points of deform- 
ity, and far better, more attractive sceneries. It is 
well. The very effort puts our thought climbing in all 
directions. Our aspirations, personal, moral, spiritual, 
are all put struggling up into a better key. We sigh 
for beauty more often, and wonder whither it has fled. 
It happens, too, not seldom, that our moral nature 
recoils accusingly upon itself when trying thus to 
improve the sterile sceneries, or the slow, cold fields 
we cultivate. It is also a fact most remarkable at this 
point, that while we are put down so very close upon 
deformity, and have so much really disgustful stuff 
crowded in upon us, we are yet allowed to create the 
very most perfect things we can conceive—to enlarge 
and new-pencil the flowers, to enrich and vary and 
make generous all the naturally niggard fruits, toe 
build houses that are palaces of beauty and forms of 


OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 225 


geometrically perfect thought never before entered into 
landscape, to set fountains in play and cascades spilling 
from the rocks, to cover up, in short, by the garnishes 
of art, all the uncomely and coarse defects of nature. 
God has no jealousy of us in these things. He loves 
_ to put us trying to create some kind of beauty; for he 
knows that, in doing it, we must think it, which we 
can not do without running out our thought, in all 
directions, fast and far—far enough to cross over the 
boundaries of our great moral and responsible life, and 
the possible sceneries to be unfolded there. And so 
the very ambition we have to create and improve, and 
finish up a more attractive state, is a kind of physical 
endeavor that carries some most excellent effects. 

A fourth moral advantage of the misshapen creatures 
and disgustful objects of the world is one not often 
suggested, and yet iminensely significant, considered as 
belonging integrally to a completely furnished moral 
state; viz., the keeping under and due regulation of the 
fastidious spirit. All bad minds and all partly good are 
exposed to this kind of peril, and if it were not for the 
rough practical encounters we have with so many dis- 
gusts and so many coarse, unsightly things, mixing, in 
one way or another, with our very experience itself, we 
can hardly imagine to what pitch the vice would grow. 
As it is even now, under so many strong correctives 
constantly applied, it is a vice most widely prevalent, 
and destructive as widely to the finest generosities and 
highest possibilities of character. It is not the sin of 


little minds only playing with affectations of qaality 
10* 


226 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


but it creeps into large, high natures, to make them 
little; for, when it has gotten firm hold even of such, 
they are not likely to be worth much afterward, as 
respects any of the heroic and beneficent virtues. Their 
prodigious delicacy eats up their sympathies, and so 
far unspheres them as to put them out of range, in all 
great works attempted for society. They can not dress 
a wound, or visit a hospital. The barefooted child ask- 
ing bread in the street, ought to make a more presenta- 
ble appearance. What right had a beggar last night to 
. come and die at their gate. They would like to copy 
the Master in doing charities to the poor, but the bad 
air and the squalid appearances repel them. They 
would have more pleasure in the communion if it were 
more select. They do not like to be accosted as a 
brother, lest a little more relationship may be claimed 
than they are ready to allow. They apprehend some 
lack of delicacy in attempts to rescue a certain fallen 
portion of society. They are also greatly scandalized 
by demonstrations of piety that go beyond the conven- 
tional forms. And how can they be expected to get 
benefit from prayers and addresses that mistake their 
grammar. This weak, unreasoning, very unpractical 
vice creeps everywhere, and no specification can ex- 
haust the forms of mischief it assumes. It is the vice 
of not doing, or rather of not quite liking any thing 
proposed to be done. We can not too much honor the 
beneficence of God, in the disgusts and disagreeable, 
distasteful-looking things by which he is all the while 
crowding us, if possible, out of our fastidiousness and 


OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 227 


the foolishness of our unpractical delicacy. Were it 
not for this, it is doubtful whether Christ himself could 
ever have gotten hold of personal respect enough to 
make good his evidences. Why should he do so many 
unrespectable things? Why did he give out his sym- 
- pathies so freely to so many disgusting creatures? How 
could he hear unshocked Martha’s speech at the 
grave of Lazarus? Nothing saves us from this mean- 
minded, foolish kind of criticism, but the fact that our 
every scheme of life is a drill to keep us off from it. 
And yet even now there is more great living, and 
grandly toned beneficence killed by this contemptible 
delicacy, than there is by the rough, hard fights of war. 
We do not commonly think of it as having any particu- 
lar moral significance, and yet it poisons human broth- 
erhood more perversely, in ways more wide of reason, 
than any other kind of sin. Indeed, if Christianity 
squarely confronts any particular point in the moral 
configuration of the world, it is exactly here. It comes 
into the world, we may almost say, as a good angel, to 
look after the disgusts of it, the lunatic ravings, the 
blind eyes, the halting limbs, the leprosies and sores, 
the publicans and harlots, and their much dishonored 
sorrows. This is the true moral beauty, and to this 
God is training us, by all the revulsions through which 
we are made to pass. 

And so we are brought out, last of all, at the very 
poirt which makes the only sufficient and true conclu- 
sion of our subject; viz., the fact that what we call 
God’s beauty is not anywise dishonored by the deform- 


, 


928 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


ties and disgusts of nature, but is, after all, only per 
fectly and effectively expressed by means of them. 
When he gives away mere physical beauty, for a good 
and necessary end, his moral beauty is only displayed 
in that kind of sacrifice. To have his own works 
marred and scarred, stamped with ignominy, configured 
to the disgusts and obliquities of evil, was a most costly 
condescension, fitly to be called a sacrifice; for it was 
impossible that so great mental beauty should not cling 
to its own perfect forms, and long to look on the unsul 
-ied faces of its children—thinking regretfully of them 
even as he did of his Son, when he sighed: “ his visage 
was so marred more than any man, and his form more 
than the sons of men.” Call it, therefore, sacrifice— 
even the creation itself—the sacrifice before the sacri- 
fice ; for how much real beauty, dear to God, is sunk 
in the grotesque and forbidding forms created! True, 
we call it still a beautiful world, though it is plainly 
enough a great way off from that—farther off to God 
than it can be to us. 

What, then, shall we say—is God dishonored, or at 
all less honorable, that we find him presiding over so 
many uncouth shapes, and creatures so infected with 
airs af disgust? By no means. Exactly contrary to 
this, his most real, his gloriously sublime beauty could 
never have been seen, except under just these condi- 
tions. Just because it was so great a thing for the 
Creator to give up the beauty of things, and subject his 
whole vast product to adverse criticism—to let all the 
deformities, all the commonnesses, all the disgusts be 


OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 229 


installed in it—by this very sacrifice in things is his 
ineffable moral beauty revealed. At this point comes 
out the true glory of his fatherhood. He is willing to 
let even his great work fall with us, and take on the 
shows of our dishonors; for he means to have our moral 

ideas unfolded by them, and also to be with us and 
assist our struggles upward out of them. By so many 
abnegations and paternal condescensions is he proving 
out his greatness and beauty upon us. And the result 
is that, after we have begun, as in this article, to lay 
our criticism on the unsightly facts of the world, draw- 
ing our own conclusion that there is probably about as 
much blemish as beauty in things, we are brought 
round, at the close, to make our discovery, that God’s 
real beauty—viz., that which is chiefest and highest 
above all, his moral beauty—is, after all, about us and 
upon us, and if we speak of blemish or stain, is practi- 
eally infinite. So that our unbeautiful world is yet 
both symbol and pledge of God’s infinite beauty. He 
suffers no subtraction thus, in the blemished things of 
his creation, but is raised in all highest majesty and 
greatness by them; let forth, we may even say, into 
the full-orbed moral effulgence of his character. 

How important, also, this may be in its moral effect 
upon us will be readily seen. We inhabit, thus, a 
world where moral beauty is the chief beauty. I 
believe, too, that we commonly feel it to be so, apart 
from any such refinements as may seem to have been 
attempted in this article. We do not see the exact 
amount of beauty here that we think we have a right 


230 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


to look for, and yet there comes upon us somehow, 
apart from all fine-spun distinctions, an impression that 
our nobly great and Perfect Friend is with us, and that 
still the infinite beauty of good isin him. He hangs 
about us like a moral vision, certified to our feelings in 
spite of, or even by, just all the deformities of the 
world. And this vision, or impression, always wel- 
come, is printing itself more and more deeply on 
us, every hour, by our scarcely conscious, yet fixed 
habit of reverence. We get accustomed, in this way, to 
thinking of moral beauty as the only sovereign distine- 
tion. And it is exactly this impression that we want; 
so that we may have our own great struggle consum- 
mated init. All the moral uses of life, therefore, come 
to their point in this—in learning how to let go capti- 
vating things for such as are solid, in making sacrifices 
of things innocent for things beneficent, in ceasing to 
please ourselves that we may work out the fruit of our 
principles. 

There is yet derivable from this whole subject, as 
now presented, a very simple inference in regard to the 
future that is too significant to be suppressed. When 
the present life is ended, and the grand consummation 
of its uses complete, the reasons that require so much 
of deformity and loathsomeness in the world will be 
discontinued, and the new state entered upon will be 
garnished, doubtless, by new forms and images that are 
without blemish—perfect in purity and beauty. Then, 
for the first time, will it be seen how largely the faces 
and sceneries and objects of our present world were 


OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 231 


marred by defect and disproportion. The dreary com- 
monness of all these things will be a discovery; for the 
beauty of the new world will be so complete, we may 
believe, as to exclude even the lack of interest and ex- 
pression, retouching all faces aud forms in such manner 
as their perfect idealization requires. 

In the same way it also follows that, going into a 
second state of probation hereafter, which many assume 
to be an authorized expectation, we must of course 
encounter there all the unbeautiful things, deformities, 
and loathsomenesses we encounter here, and probably 
as much worse and more frequent, as the key we start 
upon there is lower, by the whole unprofiting of a mis- 
spent life. All the reasons that require unsightly and 
disgustful things will still hold good, requiring the 
second state of trial also, to be insphered representa- 
tionally by such kind of images and disfigurements as 
will most exactly tally with the qualities and characters 
insphered. Whether such a prospect is more agreeable 
than none atall, some persons will not readily decide. 


XL. 


OF PLAGUE AND PESTILENCE, 


As certainly as God exists, maintaining a complete 
and perfect government over the world, all events have 
some definite use or meaning, which is the reason 
of their existence. They take place, not merely by 
causes but for causes ; that is, for ends of intelligence 
and goodness—always for moral ends; for if we some- 
times speak of physical ends in the Divine govern- 
ment, there will ever be some last end still beyond, 
wherein God has respect to the discipline of souls; 
that is, to character. That any thing physical can be 
a last end with God is quite unsupposable. At the 
same time, while plagues and pestilences are not more 
truly appointed for given ends or uses than other 
events, the place they fill in the grand economy of 
human existence is too important to allow the belief 
that they occur for any reasons but such as are of the 
greatest moment. 

The figure they make in written history is not prom- 
ment, I know, when compared with the figure made 
by the wars of the race; and yet I am by no means 
certain that their effects on the race have been either 
less destructive to life, or, in a social and moral point 


OF PLAGUE AND PESTILENCE. 233 


of view, less important. The history of war is the 
history of exploit and passion, full of dramatic energy, 
and abounding in examples of heroic valor and scenes 
of tragic suffering. But pestilence is death without a 
history. It shows us men melting away in silence 
before the breath of an invisible destroyer. It is car- 
nage without heroism. There is no leadership, no 
counsel, no exploit or victory. Death and burial, and 
death too fast for burial, cities pale with fear, streets 
where the dying pile upon the unburied dead, nations 
thinning away, helpless and panic-struck, beseeching 
heaven to spare, and offering hecatombs of children to 
appease their gods—these and such like are the mate- 
rial of pestilence. It is too painful for history. His- 
tory shuns it, only raising a monument here and there, 
in some brief paragraph or section, just to perpetuate 
the memory of so great weakness, fear, and spiritual 
dispossession. But we must not think that, because 
the plagues and pestilences fill no large spaces in writ- 
ten history, their effects and consequences are only 
trivial. They represent the silence of God, which 
is more operative sometimes, moving on a vaster 
scale, and causing, it may be, greater desolations than 
the noisiest thunders and bloodiest commotions of 
human strife and battle. The rule of Providence is 
in them; and Providence does not require a history 
to give it name and effect; still it goes on, from age 
to age, doing its will upon all peoples and empires, 
working out, by silent campaigns of causes, results 
that, for scope and central depth of meaning, have a 


234 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


comparatively unmeasured and measureless conse- 
quence. 

To merely recapitulate the great plagues or pesti- 
lences that have swept over the world, within the 
period of definite history, would be quite impossible 
in such an article as this. I will only instance a few, 
just to raise a degree of impression, where commonly 
almost no impression appears to exist. Thus, in 4. p, 
170, a terrible pestilence ravaged all Europe. In Rome 
alone, when at its height, it was estimated that the 
deaths were at least 10,000 a day. Again, the whole 
Roman Empire, from Egypt to Scotland, was swept 
over, in the same manner, by a pestilence that raged 
between A.D. 250 and 262. Gibbon says it was caleu- 
lated that half the human race perished in that single 
pestilence. Passing over a great number of interven- 
ing plagues, another general pestilence was coursing 
back and forth, through Europe and the world, for a 
period of fifty-eight years, between a. p. 542 and a. D. 
600, limited to no climate, no season of the year, no 
mode of communication, but coming and going at 
pleasure, with little respect either to means or reme- 
dies. Some cities were even left without an inhabit- 
ant. Passing over whole centuries again, that were 
marked by destructive plagues, we descend to the 
period between a. p. 1345 and 1350, when we trace a 
terrible pestilence, sometimes called the black death, 
extending from Eastern China to Ireland. In many 
cities, nine out of ten of the inhabitants perished. 
Some were entirely depopulated. In London, 50.000 


OF PLAGUE AND PESTILENOE. 235 


of the dead were buried in one grave-yard. Venice 
lost 100,000 inhabitants, Lubec 90,000, Flerence the 
same number. During the three years of the disease 
in Spain, it is affirmed that two-thirds of the people 
perished. Another general plague desolated Europe in 
1665-7 ; Naples losing 240,000 out of 290,000 inhabit- 
ants, Genoa 80,000 out of 94,000. In London, 68,000 
perished by the same disease, and the other great cities 
of Europe were visited scarcely less severely. Again, a 
terrible pestilence broke out and continued to rage be- 
tween A. p. 1702 and 1711, which visited all Europe, 
and extended also to this country. Now, consider that, 
in this little calendar, I have named only a few of the 
great and general plagues on record; that, meantime, 
a certain regular band of contagious diseases, which 
seem to be inexhaustible and immortal, such as yellow 
fever, scarlet fever, small-pox, and the like, are march- 
ing ever round the world on their mission of death;- 
and then, besides, that peculiar and strange outbreaks 
of malignant epidemic have meantime been desolating 
one or another part of the world—and you begin to 
conceive what rank must be assigned to pestilences in 
the grand economy of human existence. If, in the 
empire of China alone twenty-five millions of people 
were carried off by a single one of the plagues to which 
I have referred—a number greater, by many times, 
than perished in all the wars of Napoleon—if, by an- 
other, it is found that even the world itself is half 
depopulated, it can not be that God has not some end 
of the highest consequence to serve, by an instrument- 


236 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


ality so tremendous. What, then, we ask, are the sup- ~ 
posable ends and uses of God in the appointment of a 
discipline so appalling? I answer— 

1. That they undoubtedly serve important uses as 
regards moral and social advancement, by the effects 
wrought in the physical economy of the race. Sin, 
running constantly down into ways of vice and de- 
pravity, produces a certain virus, or poison, in the 
physical stock of families. This morbid quality, or 
virus, accumulating for several generations, and work- 
ing both a moral and physical debility in the subjects, 
continually aggravated by filthy habits of life and low 
supplies of food, it becomes necessary that some deso- 
lating disease be developed, which will purge the race 
of so much low or diseased blood, and prevent the in- 
fection from extending further. Accordingly, it is 
observed that all plagues and pestilences begin, as 
fermentations of death, in the lowest forms of society 
and character, and generally in the most degraded 
nations of the world. And so, notwithstanding sin 
working ever as a poison of death in the world, God 
manages, by occasional plagues or pestilences, break- 
ing out just where and when they are wanted, to keep 
good the physical stock of the race, raising it even to 
a higher pitch of cultivation and of spiritual capacity, 
from one age to another. And without this kind of 
agency, exerted by occasional plagues or pestilent dis- 
eases, there is reason to fear that the stock of the race 
would become fatally infected and poisoned through- 
out; and so, human society, instead of rising, might 


OF PLAGUE AND PESTILENCE. 237 


~ be ever descending to a feebler type of manhood and 
a meaner capacity of character. 

2. Great pestilences appear to be needed in order to 
sustain the reality or keep alive in the race efficient 
impressions of God. For it is humiliating, that the 
proof of God which most avails with mankind is not 
that which is offered to our intelligence, but that which 
meets our conscience and our fears. It is so, partly 
because we are under so great intellectual and moral 
blindness—so unreflecting and careless of things in- 
visible ; principally because we do not seem really to 
be met, if I may use that figure, by those gifts of un- 
deserved favor and blessing which are dispensed in 
connection with a plan of redemptive mercy. Indeed 
there are certain incidental defects, if I may so call 
them, in any such plan of mercy, which could hardly 
be avoided, and which render it liable, so far, to 
the encouragement of atheism. For, in order to be 
impressed by the sense of God in the events of life, we 
must feel a conviction that they have a meaning and a 
relation to ends of high significance. But this we shall 
not feel unless they seem exactly to meet something in 
our own desert, or want, or character. Accordingly 
it will be found, that men who have no sense of God, 
or of final causes, in the common events and mer- 
cies of life—because mercies meet no conscious feeling 
of desert in transgression—or who even deride the 
suggestion that God has any definite end or use in 
such events, will immediately give in to the contrary 
conviction, when some terrible visitation of calamity 


238 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


appears. All because there is a certain correspondenes 
felt between such tremendous judgments and their own 
convictions of desert. Now the religious instinct is 
moved. This, they will cry, is God; the just anger of 
God or the gods. The sacrifices are multiplied, the 
solemn processions are made, the fasts are proclaim- 
ed, and when the destroyer rages fiercely they will 
rush into the temples in panic-stricken crowds, tearing 
their hair, falling on their faces, and beseeching God 
or the gods, in distressful outcries, to turn away their 
anger. 

Every great pestilence is in this view a much needed 
apostle of religion. And if such visitations did not 
occur, at intervals, there is reason to suspect that a plan 
of mercy would of itself encourage atheism, or obliter- 
ate the sense of moral government—by reason of the 
fact, that a perpetual run of undeserved mercies would 
bring no sense of fitness, therefore none of a God dis- 
tributing events by laws of fitness. It is necessary, 
therefore, that God should open, now and then, the gates 
of terror, and march out on the guilty fears of the race. 
Then, how real is God! how true and just are his judg- 
ments ! how sober a thing is life! how momentous an 
interest is religion ! 

8. It is another use of great pestilences, that they 
yield us a conviction so intense of the moral debility 
and degradation of sin. Inthe exploits of war you 
might even forget, sometimes, that men are not gods 
themselves, by reason of the magnanimous spirit dis- 
played and the heroic scenes transacted. But when 


OF PLAGUE AND PESTILENCE. 239 


you see them under a pestilence, they appear to be the 
tamest and most unmagnanimous of beings. 

Though it is well understood, at such times, that cer. 
tain indulgences, whether of vice or vicious appetite. 
are connected with danger, still, as if to prove the in- 
tense sensuality of their nature, how many will steal on 
after appetite, cheated of all reasonable self-control and 
discretion, till the fatal limit is passed. And then, the 
moment any symptom of the disease is felt, they will 
give way to a tempest of fear, which overturns all 
equanimity and offers them to the death, half dead al- 
ready. There will be noble examples of charity and 
manly courage in such scenes; but oftener, and espe- 
cially if the pestilence becomes exceedingly violent and 
fatal, it will be aggravated and rendered tenfold more 
fatal by a gratuitous panic, in which spirit, confidence, 
and self possession, are all quite taken away. And if 
the disease rages a great length of time, it will gener- 
ally be seen, too, that selfishness, in its pure meanness 
and degradation, is about the only residuum of char- 
acter left. The well will flee from the sick and dying 
—friend from friend. The dead will be left unburied ; 
children will desert their dying parents; fathers and 
mothers flee, in consternation and superstitious horror, 
from their children ; and it will seem that every thing 
has given way that belongs to the dignity of the human 
creature, leaving only a herd of sheep in the forms of 
men, without the innocence that makes even that spirit 
less animal respectable. 

There is sometimes revealed a stage cf depravity be 


240 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


yond even this, when, throngh a protracted despair of 
life, the state of panic has passed into that of horror 
and wildness. Such was the plague of Athens, as de- 
scribed by Thucydides. The people of Attica had been 
driven into the city, and there they were besieged by 
their enemies. The plague fell among them under the 
siege, and they began to die with continually increasing 
frequency, till, at last, burial was forgotten or impos 
sible. The dead were piled in circles about the fount- 
ains, where they crept to slake their insupportable 
thirst. Panic soon changed into horror, the people 
grew wild and desperate, all the bonds of feeling and 
duty gave way. Brutal crimes and licentious pleasures, 
justified by sneers at the impotence of the gods, and by 
the argument that nothing better was left, became the 
spirit of society itself, and the city appeared to be 
rather a city of fiends than of men. 

And so it will always be found, though not always 
in the same degree, that man or the human race never 
appears to be so weak, unrespectable and base, as 
when some dreadful pestilence displays the true un- 
restrained view of their character. Is it no purpose of 
God, in the permission of plague and pestilence, to give 
us a revelation so painfully instructive and so mortify- 
ing to our self-respect ? 

4, While the less instructed and more paganized 
souls are likely to be affected in the manner just de- 
scribed, it will be quite otherwise with such as have 
been trained to juster impressions of God. These will 
be thinking rather of the great ends of beneficent dis 


OF PLAGUE AND PESTILENOE,. 241 


cipline, for which their chastisement is sent, and are 
likely so to be more softened by it. They will not 
forthwith break loose in some outcry of superstition, at 
such times, in the manner of certain Christian preachers, 
testifying of God’s judgments now come, in the sense 
that God’s judgments have their meaning only in de- 
structions ; but they will be thinking of a terribly good 
meaning in them, which ought to bow them in repent- 
ances. Thus, when it was given to David to choose 
between famine, captivity, and pestilence, he made 
choice of the latter, because it was better to fall into 
the hands of the Lord, and not into the hands of men. 
Famine is generally from man, or by man’s fault. Cap- 
tivity is from man. But the pestilence that walketh in 
darkness, or cometh in mystery, is God’s messenger, and 
represents the hand of the Lord—that very strong, some- 
times awful, always good hand. No people can by any 
sort of inquest trace its birth, or lay open its causes. 
But they can all say that it cometh out from God, and 
bowing under it with unquestioning homage and trust, 
they are likely to be corrected and won by his appall- 
ing discipline, as they would not be by a more unbroken 
flow of his favors. When such judgments of his are 
abroad in the lands, they will, at least some of them, — 
learn righteousness. 

True, it may be said that men die at other times, and 
that, if no pestilence came, we all should die. But 
when we only fall away one by one, in regular order, © 
then it is in our habitual atheism to say that there is a 


eause for this, and not see any longer that it is for a 
1 


242 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


cause. It is the ordinary way of things, we say; it is 
the law of nature that lives should reach their limit. 
But when some giart death marches round through 
cities and kingdoms, and over lakes and rivers, 
mowing down whole populations before their time, we 
think of something back of nature, and higher. We 
are admonished of God, and there falls upon us a so- 
bered feeling that even passes into a character, and be- 
comes fixed in the deepest associations of our life. Thus 
whoever, at this fur-off day, thinks of the plague of 
Athens or of London, thinks of God as a tremendous 
}eing, and of man as chaff before him. On esthetic 
principles, God is a different being to the world be.ause 
of his judgments—mysterious, fearful, sovereign, and, in 
goodness, awfully good. We are set in a different tem- 
perament before him and his truth—to be more modest 
and sober, more teachable, more readily convinced, 
less captious in our doubts as we are less bold in feeling. 

5. It is a most important use of great pestilences that 
they enforce, with an energy so terrible, the conviction 
of the unity of the race, and especially that they com- 
pel the higher and more privileged ranks of mankind 
to own their oneness of life with the humbler and more 
degraded or even savage classes. It is a most remark- 
able fact that, as the Asiatic cholera, so called, took its 
birth in the remote East, among a most degraded and 
decayed family of the race, so all the great pestilences 
of history—black death, glandular plague, small-pox, 
and other like visitations of God that have extended 
over the world—had their rise in China, Egypt, Africa, 


OF PLAGUE AND PESTILENOE. 243 


or among some other people of the globe, run down by 
heathenism and its vices. Here, among the ruins of 
sin, where the race has been reduced in quality by a 
long course of pliysical and moral corruption—by sav- 
age passions, by indolence, filth, falsehood, oppression, 
- fear and licentiousness—just here, I say, when we are 
beginning to doubt whether a type of humanity so low 
can be properly called human, there is generated the 
virus of some death that is to desolate the whole world. 
First, we hear of it in the distance of a half circumfer- 
ence of the globe; then that it is marching on through 
kingdom after kingdom, till, finally, it reaches the high- 
est points of civilization, filling cities and palaces with 
death and terror. It returns too, probably, again and 
again, in its circuit of woe, as if it were sent of God to 
unpeople the world. 

And so the highest ranks of character and cultivation 
_ are seen to be one family with barbarians and savages; 
dying like sheep from one age to another, under the 
ignoble diseases they generate. We can not escape the 
dark fraternity of woe in which they claim us, for there 
is no other and separate world to which we can retire. 
We are shut up with them to breathe the miasma of 
their sins, and die with such kind of deaths as they 
may propagate. 

Thus, also, we ought to die. Itisright. For if we 
visit them not in the brotherhood of light and love, to 
raise them up into newness of life, then let them visit us, 
by a fixed law of social unity, and pour the virus of 
their degradation upon us, in cholera, black death, or 


244 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


plague—in whatsoever form God may appoint. This 
terrible brotherhood, this oneness of organic order and 
fate signified by the word Awmanity /—what an appeal 
does it make to us for the gospeling of these barbarous 
and decayed nations. It is China, Asia, Egypt, Africa 
—one dark region or another—sending out its messen- 
ger of pestilence to assert the old affinities of blood, 
and lay the awful demands of brotherhood and mercy . 
at our door! When we deny the fraternity claimed, 
and our children, fathers, brothers and wives die for it 
in our houses, we follow them out to their graves, con- 
fessing by our tears that our community of life with 
the diseased nations of sin is, alas! too fearfully proved. 
And so each plague and giant death that stalks across 
the world, is really sent forth as a tremendous call for 
mercy and light wanted in some dark realm far away. 
One speaks for China, another for middle Asia, another 
for Africa, or the islands of the Indian Archipelago; 
and so they will continue to speak, until their terrible 
call is heard and the plagues of their degraded life 
are healed. Meanwhile it is also to be noticed that, 
when any kind of plague or malignant disease, passing 
round its deadly circuit, makes a beginning in any 
given nation or city, the first notice had of it will 
almost always be among the lowest and most depressed 
ranks of the people. If there be any spot, or commu- 
nity, or corner, where vice has its orgies, and where, 
under want and filth and sin, the wretched, half-dis- 
eased members of society congregate; if living in such 
a way for generations has brought down even the 


OF PLAGUE AND PESTILENCE. 245 


native tone of the stock and produced a people gan- 
grened, so to speak, in the birth; just there the new 
plague, whatever it be, will be attracted, and they will 
receive it as tinder receives the fire. And there it 
will gradually spread and rise in its range, till habits 
of temperance and virtue cease to have any power 
against it. As it was in the plague of Athens, which 
appeared first among the sailors congregated in the 
Pirzeus, soit has been with almost every plague, in its 
first appearance, at any place or in any city. 

And thus, again, we have it brought yet closer to us, 
that we live in the real brotherhood of alJl corruption, 
and no pitch of rank or wall of caste can separate us 
from its woes. When it takes a pestilence and has 
nursed it into power, it is for us! As fashions go 
downward, diseases and plagues go upward; one sim- 
ply preparing shapes for the body, but the other, by 
a more awful prerogative, the disease by which, 
under fashion or without, it shall die. What an argu- 
ment, again, is this, requiring us to become the guard- 
ians and ministers of love to the children of want and 
degradation around us. For if we do not raise them 
up out of vice and dejection by the Christian means we 
apply, they will bring in woes and deaths upon our 
children, the infection of which ages can not expend or 
expel. 

Once more: there is a great moral benefit to accrue 
from the dispensation of plague and pestilence, in the 
evidence, thence to be revealed, of the remarkable san- 
ative power of Christianity. If we had no seats of vice, 


246 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


no degraded and abject classes, run down by idleness, 
want, uncleanly and vicious habit, the propagations of 
plague would almost certainly come to their limit in a 
very short time. No such plague, for example, as the 
Asiatic cholera, has ever been able to get any strong 
hold, or rage with any great violence, among the New 
England people. They have such habits of industry, a 
condition of life so plentiful and healthful, so much of 
physical tone, and so little withal of that superstition 
which is the soul of all panic, that the infections of 
pestilence meet a barrier, when they arrive, that is very 
nearly impassable. Besides, it is a fact most remark- 
able, that the virus of no desolating plague is known 
ever to have originated among a Christian people. In 
the propagations of causes, all evil runs from bad to 
worse by a fixed law, and there is no self-remedial 
function in mere nature that will ever stay the pro- 
cess. Things will go on, asin a disordered machine, 
the very motion of which aggravates the disorder, till 
it is finally quite threshed to pieces and brought to a 
stand. And in much the same way the pestilences of 
the world appear to generate the virus of their death 
in what may be called the last run, or the lowest run, 
of their disordered causes. When some people is 
fairly rotted down by low living, or filthy and base 
habit, they generate, finally, a plague-infection that 
poisons the world. Hence there appear to be no 
Christian plagues, because no Christian people can 
ever sink to a type of moral and physical dejection low 
enough to breed them. They will have too much of 


OF PLAGUE AND PESTILENOE. 247 


character, condition, good keeping, courage superior 
to panic—too much antidote, in a word, to allow the 
distilling of any such poison. Is it idle to suggest, or 
foolish to believe that Christianity, as a grace of 
remedy in the world, has a supernatural touch, that 
sends a qualifying counter-shock through the bad 
- eauses of nature, and prevents the plague-mischief 
being fully concocted? Is there no healing virtue going 
out of the hem of its garment, which is entered, super- 
naturally, into the run of the bad causes, to divert, or 
turn them off, from their otherwise natural consumma- 
tion ? 

However this may be, Christianity, as a matter of 
fact, is seen to hold a position of antagonism to plague 
and pestilence, that gives it a remarkable superemi- 
nence above all the false religions of heathenism. It 
has antiseptic properties, which prove both its origin 
and its value. We see what it can do in the fact that 
plague, the lowest fermentation of sin, is averted, or 
at least decisively counteracted by it. So much of 
health, or healing, goes with the reconciliation or re- 
generated harmony it proposes to work in the mind. 
By such tokens it puts us in courage to believe that all 
worst forms of debility and moral degradation will 
finally be removed, and a new type of energy and 
power developed in the race. Seeing what our gospel 
can do, as against plague and pestilence, we are 
strengthened, in fact, by plague and pestilence, as we 
could not be byits more indefinite ministries and helps 
in the ordinary forms of disease. We anticipate under 


248 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


it a day of health and robust life, in which great things 
will be done and higher inspirations of genius revealed. 
Population will be multiplied and grow dense without 
danger, society will receive more impulse, and all the 
conditions of existence will be raised. Toward this 
grand consummation our gospel is piloting all the poor 
diseased nations. What it has done, and is seen to be 
doing, is the token, as well as proof, that the healing it 
has undertaken it will be able also to perform. The 
sublime picture of prophecy it will so fulfill, hecoming 
a river of life, covered on the banks with trees of life, 
whose leaves are the healing of the nations. The great 
plagues and pestilences are ended and gone. Minis- 
ters of wrath, as being ministers of good, they are 
wanted no more, and there is no more curse. 


Xi. 


OF INSANITY. 


Tue subject of insanity is by no means fresh or 
inviting. But since the fact itself is the darkest of all 
dark things in the catalogue of the world’s suffering 
allotments, I do not feel at liberty to decline it. Enough 
is said of it, but not all that most needs to be said. 
The topic is in the hospitals and the courts—expounded 
and re-expounded—handled pathologically, therapeuti- 
eally, statistically, philanthropically, and, so far, ex- — 
haustively. All the natural phases and conditions 
appear to be fully explored. And yet there is a partic- 
ular point in the higher relations of the subject which 
I do not remember ever to have seen referred to. I 
mean the strong anti-moral look it seems to carry ; 
presenting facts that, as far as they go, appear to be 
almost unreducible to the supposition of a moral pur- 
pose, or even to cloud the more general confidence of a 
moral government concerned in the rougher allotments 
of life. I do not feel obliged, of course, to surrender 
to this kind of impression. I even hope to throw some 
partial light upon the question, such as I believe the 
case permits. The frowning anti-moral aspects it 


presents are these :— 
11* 


250 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 


1. That it is not as distinctly retributive on the 
subjects as we should naturally expect where there is a 
treatment so terribly severe; being often hereditary, 
often a calamity befalling the most saintly persons, 
invading often the most amiable dispositions, and not 
seldom associating impressions of some wild possession 
by evil spirits, of whose presence and agency we scarce 
know what to make. 

2. That it puts a full stop always to the uses of the 
moral life, causing the subject to exist in a way that 
cuts off the benefits of existence, and forbidding him 
thenceforward any possibility of improvement, in that 
which was the principal and almost only errand of his 
mission asa human creature. He can not even dosuch 
a thing as duty, of which, perhaps, he sometimes fondl 
talks. 

3. Almost nothing can be learned by others from 
his vagaries. Being out of the moral life, there is no 
moral lesson to be drawn from his discourse or his 
action. 

4, Where there is a recovery and even complete 
restoration, the whole space covered by the interregnum 
of the insanity is a blank; so that he can get back 
uothing to remember from it, but can only start again, 
at the point where his reason left him. He has lost so 
much, grown old by just so many months or years, and 
gets no compensation. Probably he has lost what stood 
him in much higher consequence, the confidence of his 
nature in itself; for returning now to himself, he re- 
turns to a self that has been shattered, always to be 


OF INSANITY. 251 


weakened and oppressed by misgivings that discourage 
the assurances, if they do not unsettle the equilibrium, 
of his moral character itself. 

5. Where there is no recovery, the life was practi- 
cally ended from the day when the empire of reason 

_was broken; after that he passes just so many years of 
time, as one of the dead unburied; talking, suffering, 
wrestling with his enemy, yet practically dead; getting 
nothing of life for himself, and communicating noth- 
ing to others, save the cares and claims of pity he lays 
upon them. 

In all these points the moral possibilities of the 
subject appear to be sadly crippled, and we do not see, 
at once, the uses by which so great a loss may be 
compensated. I recollect no other case in the whole 
contour of our human experience, where a suspicion 
can be so naturally taken up, that the moral ends of 
life are forgot. If chance, or fate, or what some call 
nature, were the supreme arbiter in events, we might 
look to see just such gaps of rule without reason or a 
true moral end; but that a supreme intelligence, dis- 
posing all things in the interest of character, should so 
often break down even the chances and capacities of 
character is a perplexing discovery. What, then, shall 
we say? Is it so, or is it not? Can we bring the 
question to a point that affords some partial relief to 
our perplexity? Almost all dark things in our hu- 
man allotments are cleared by a careful explanation 
of their moral ends and offices. The daylight of the 
world is in its adjustments for character. Whether 


252 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


it be so here, in this ill-looking subject, we are now to 
inquire. 

And, first of all, we shall find, recurring to that 
point and scanning it more closely, that cases of in- 
sanity are much more frequently retributive than our 
very tender pity at first allowed us to perceive. 

Three great vices, one or all, carry this dreadful 
penalty, in examples that are numerous and easily to 
be traced. (1) The vice of intemperate drink, which 
maddens first the body, and then, as by necessary con- 
sequence, the mind; producing either delirium or 
idiocy, or a state of uncontrollable exasperation. (2) 
The vice of general and excessive over-eating, breeding 
disorder and finally distress in all the digestive fune- 
tions, and producing states of grim depression, hypo- 
chondriac torments and nervous horrors, that drive 
more patients to the hospital than even the vice of 
drink—all very correct, blameless people, as we say, 
whose misfortune we pity, but can nowise explain. 
Few persons conceive the amount of constitutional and 
mental wreck produced by this habitual overloading of 
nature, restrained by no terms of prudence and self- 
observation. And, when the catastrophe comes, the 
wonder is that a nature so robust has crumbled into 
madness without any assignable cause! (3) The vice 
of over-doing. We call it sometimes our American 
vice. The nature is put under a heavy pressure of 
instigation, and driven up to the limits of possibility, 
year upon year; spelled by no relaxations, freshened 
by no play of society, and scarcely permitted the neces- 


OF INSANITY. 253 


sary respite of sleep. Life goes on like a storm that 
never lulls, and the powers are so relentlessly driven, 
that they are seldom gathered up into consciousnesa 
and self-recollection. The brain itself becomes a 
driving engine, that never slacks the whirl of its 
_impulsions, It is as if the man were all momentum 
and nothing else. What wonder then is it, if the 
powers never gathered up, the brain always whirling, 
the momentum no longer possible to be stopped, hurl 
aside, finally, the mastery of self-government by which 
they have never been really mastered, and the whole 
mental incontinence flies to wild insanity. Whether 
the wreck is partly physical or not, at first, is a matter 
of no consequence. The result we deplore as calamity, 
and the cause we call imprudence. It is vice, it is 
crime; no such rank abuse of nature is possible with- 
out crime, and the eternal laws of retribution forbid 
that any man be so long drunk with excess, and escape 
the consummation of a state of madness, 

Besides these three more general and widely-sown 
vices, and the crops of insanities they propagate, we 
have abundance of smaller ones doing what they can to 
extend the harvest. Thus how many live on affectations 
and contrived seemings of principle and character, till 
they lose the distinctions of reality, and are landed in 
complete insanity! Excesses and fierce tempests of 
passion—how often do they burn out the natural colli- 
gations of reason, leaving only fumes and vagaries, and 
frenzied exasperations. What is avarice but a vice that 
runs to miserhood? and what is that but insanity ? Im- 


254 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


pure habits rot the brain of how many victims? Idle 
ness unyokes all the judgments, lets fly all the vagrant 
uncollected powers, and finally, as age advances, breeds 
a state of nonentity that can not hold opinions, or a hair- 
brained, addled state that opinions can not hold. Rash 
adventures pitch how many headlong down the gulf 
of insanity? Conceit is next thing to insanity at the 
beginning, and is how very often identical with it at 
the close. Glancing over these and a hundred other 
sporadic vices of character that could be named, we see 
how many causes making suit to retribution against 
the continuance of reason. Though we were at first so 
ready to conclude that insanities are not, or almost 
never, retributive, we distinctly perceive that they are 
so in a very large proportion of the examples. It is 
even difficult to believe that a good many cases of re- 
ligious insanity are not connected with some kind of 
mal-practice, or perhaps with some moodiness of tem- 
per, that is really perverse ; though they are many times 
due, no doubt, to causes previously at work in the 
nature itself, possibly to such as are, in a sense, hered- 
itary. Diseases in genera. are commonly supposed to 
have their root in moral causes and their bad implica- 
tions; in that sense to be the common heritage of the 
‘ race. Thus certain particular diseases, such as deaf- 
ness, blindness, consumption, are supposed to be hered- 
itary in certain particular families ; and many have as 
little difficulty in saying that the same is true of insan- 
ity. It may be so in appearance; but that any death 
of faculty, so immeasurably deep and horrible to think 


OF INSANITY. 255 


of, is let down upon a human creature by mere physical 
derivation, and without any blame in himself, is too 
shocking to be allowed, without some partial and collat- 
eral explanation that will ease the severity of the state- 
ment. Such things must be left to the future; and it 
must suffice, for the present, that we distinguish so 
clearly, on so wide a scale, the retributive connection 
of our insanities with our self-abusing crimes and vices. 
On the whole it is even a fair subject of wonder, that so 
large a portion of mankind, driven by so many excesses, 
tossed by so many tempests of unreason, sunk so deep 
in wrong, eaten by so many acrid humors, battered by 
s0 many abuses of faculty, get through life without 
being hopelessly insane. Nokind of machine was ever 
kept running for so long a time in a state of general 
disorder, without being threshed into wreck by its own 
motions. 

Consider, secondly, the moral intent, and what must 
be the ultimate moral effects, of this clearly discoverable 
connection between the insanities of the world and its 
self-abusing practices. Calling it a “clearly discover- 
able connection,” as in many cases it most certainly is, the 
remarkable thing appears to be that it is so very gener- 
ally undiscovered. Unless we have put our minds to 
the question, we have scarcely taken up any impression 
of the fact; and very few persons, who have occasion- 
ally noted examples of the kind, have any conception 
at all of the tremendous reactions by which the wrongs 
and excesses of men are battering and tearing asunder 
the integrity of their rational nature. 


256 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 


Therefore, some may ask, what moral benefit can 
there be in a kind of retribution, or retributive action, 
that almost nobody observes? To which it is a good 
and sufficient answer, that a great many kinds of moral 
benefit, and such as are of the very highest consequence, 
come late, and require long and heavy discipline to 
start the sense and beget the want of them. We have 
heard how many thousand lectures on the uses of ven- 
tilation, and the necessities of wholesome air? They 
began late, after millions had died for the want of it; 
and yet, even now, what multitudes have no conception 
that air is any thing! Probably a thousand years are 
wanted still to get the world apprised of the fact that 
breathing requires something to breathe! Lessons that 
come by self-observation and reflection come still later 
and more slowly. How many thousand years of dys- 

-pepsia did it take to get the sense of it fixedly enough 
to find a word for it? a word it was to be that is itself 
borrowed, in its composition, from a language already 
dead. And now that we have it, how many suffering 
invalids that have the genuine matter of it in their 
bodies—nay, in their minds beside—do we hear every 
day thanking God that they still have an excellent 
appetite left them! Everybody knows that a ship 
works heavily having too much cargo; but our poor 
life-function has to groan long ages for excess of cargo, 
before anybody guesses what the groaning is for. So 
when minds wade deep in troubles, wondering why 
there must be so many troublesome and perverse people, 
the discovery comes, how late, that what they suffer is 


OF INSANITY. 259 


all of themselves and their miserably oppressed bodies ; 
and to many it will never come at all! Probably 
enough, some of David’s enemies were not in Saul’s 
camp, nor in his own court, nor even in his bad son 
Absalom ; but in his own tired, overworked, unsleeping 
brain. Others, again, are overhung, whole months and 
years, with a dreadfully oppressive gloom—financial, 
political, or religious—never at all to know that this 
gloom is in their liver, and that in black discourage- 
ment from their self-indulgence. All these and a thou. 
sand such like pathologic matters, are abundantly de- 
scribed, or expounded, and we have a good right to 
know them. We do have a little more sense of them 
than the more ancient people had, and, probably 
enough, the people of the hundredth generation after 
us will get to be so well aware of what their moods and 
moodinesses mean, as to rectify, or skillfully keep away, 
all such kinds of torment. And so, the late-coming 
lessons insanity is to bring will finally come, dispensing 
their intended moral benefit. 

There are, then, be it observed, two great depart- 
ments of the moral life; one of which includes the 
wrongs men do against each other, and a second that 
includes the wrongs they do against themselves. The 
former kind press into recognition at once, and awaken 
prompt sensibility, because the subjects of the wrongs 
ery out themselves, demanding redress, and making the 
very air tingle with their complaint. But the wrongs 
men do against themselves start no outcry, the wrong- 
doer is the victim, and the victim calls for no arraign 


258 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


ment or redress. Probably the wrongs men do against 
themselves are twenty fold, or possibly even a thousat.d- 
fold greater in amount of damage than the wrongs they — 
do against each other ; and yet they very seldom think 
of them as being any wrong atall. They very gener- 
ally are not conscious of them; and when they are, they 
think of them as being only indiscretions, imprudences, 
excesses such as they have a good right to indulge, since 
they injure nobody but themselves; and which, there- 
fore, they only regret or chastise a little with their 
tongue, but do not really blame as morally criminal. 
Now, the other class of crimes we can not miss the sense 
of, because they come back to be seen, or heard from, 
without our asking; but these latter come only by 
reflection, and men as we have just been saying, are 
exceedingly slow to reflect. They see what is about 
them and before their eyes, but how to turn their soul- 
eye back on themselves, and see what they are to them- 
selves or against themselves, is almost never done till a 
certain reflective habit is formed, and commonly not, to 
any but a very small extent, till a reflective habit gets 
possession of society itself. 

We have, then, here, in this fearful woe of insanity, 
a great retributive law that is waiting and working for 
the time when a more reflective habit shall arrive. 
And then it is going to fasten men’s minds to the 
crimes they commit against themselves, making them 
felt as crimes in their real turpitude. And when it is 
done, a vast major department of the moral life will be 
voiced for command, in a complete set of moral con- 


OF INSANITY. 259 


victions hitherto scarcely recognized. Now, for the first 
time self-government, temperance of feeling and action, 
a genuine right keeping of life, and a religiously close 
ordering of it that suffers no excess or abuse of faculty, 
will beget a more sound state of body and mind, and 
prepare a higher form of virtue, that is health itself. 
In the other department of the moral life, public justice 
and the bad repute of all wrong-doing are the argument 
for duty. Here the argument is the tremendous insti- 
tute of insanity, visiting the silent wrongs men do 
against themselves, with its inevitable, terribly aveng- 
ing penalties. In this second stage, and broader form 
of virtue, it will be understood as a first principle that, 
if we are to keep our reason, our reason must keep us. 
We shall consider well our faculties, what they are for, 
what they want, what they can do and bear, and what 
they cannot; and we shall have a conscience that will 
cover the whole ground of our actions toward ourselves ; 
withholding us from all excesses of overdoing and self- 
indulgence as from suicide itself. Temperance, so- 
briety of feeling and passion, self-regulation at all points, 
will take the rank of duties, and their violation will be 
considered as great a crime against God, as frauds and 
deeds of blood against our fellow-men. And this con- 
viction will strengthen our practical morality all round, 
enlarge our practical wisdom, rectify our spasmodic 
overdoing, raise our family stock itself in vigor, and 
settle us in a manly and rational way of happiness. 
The serenities will be many and the insanities few, and 


260 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


whatever belongs to character will have a way of firm 
ness far aloof from all the nervous horrors. 

Again, thirdly, it is one of the great moral uses of 
insanity that we are so powerfully adraonished by it 
never to surrender our self-keeping to any kird of im 
pulse or dominating sway, outside of our own person- 
ality or self-active liberty. For it is a great and rad- 
ical distinction of moral natures, that they are to steer 
themselves by their own helm, and be responsible for 
what they may thus become—mere animals and things 
having no such high prerogative, and no capacity to 
be, different from what they are made to be, under the 
sway of causes not in themselves. Just here, accord- 
ingly, we discover a principal reason for that proneness 
to insanity, which is the infirmity of men in distinction 
from the animals. It is that, as being in evil or sin, they 
so far and frequently surrender themselves to impulsions 
or enchantments outside of their own responsible self- 
keeping. The power that was given them to gather up 
their nature in due self-colligation, and centralize it in 
the supreme domination of reason, is weakened, and 
they fly asunder, so to speak, in a scattering, unkept 
habit, that approaches, and finally becomes, insanity. 
They fall under a kind of possession, and are just so far 
dispossessed of themselves. In their zeal to get posses- 
sion of money, money gets possession of them, driving 
them on past all bounds of reason, as if it were a 
demon. Instead of possessing their business, their 
Dusiness possesses them, shoving them on to all atmost 
overdoing, and finally to madness, Society pcssesses 


OF INSANITY. 261 


them, and so completely dominates in their habit, that 
any coming short of its conventionalisms or fashions 
goads them to distraction; their own self-keeping 
force is so far taken away, that their judgments them- 
selves are reduced to a kind of insanity. They get 
possessed by other men in the same manner; one by 
some other that he thinks a hero or a genius; one by 
the name and successes of a great operator in the 
market; one by the fascinating airs and gayeties of a 
libertine ; one by a charlatan or a quack ; and another 
by a false prophet. Every soul in evil is under some 
kind of bad instigation or possession, that comes upon 
him as a gale of impulsion, swaying his objects and 
actions, and so far abating in him the sovereign keep- 
ing of his own right reason. 

How far we are subject, in this manner, to the pos- 
session of foul spirits, and how far they are concerned 
in cases of insanity it may be difficult to say. Any 
thing is a possession that dispossesses the man of him- 
self, from whatever world it comes. In this respect, 
the supposition of a possession by evil spirits is only an 
extension of the bad liability we incur under the other 
kinds of possession just named. We know that there 
are bad spirits, and it may be that they are no way 
separable from association with us, save by the fences 
of character. It does not follow that every sinister 
influence they communicate will make the subject 
insane, any more than that the other kinds of bad 
inspiration from the world and society will do it. Per- 
haps the foul possession will reach the state of com- 


262 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGE 


plete insanity, only when it has been harbored long 
enough to get the soul decentralized, as we see in the 
other cases of excess and self-abuse referred to. On 
this subject of possession by evil spirits we have little 
or no direct knowledge of our own, but we have these 
three kinds of evidence that go a certain way, and are 
perhaps sufficient. (1) The scripture account of de- 
mons and their expulsion, where however, the language 
of description appears, in one or two cases, to indicate 
the impression that they are only cases of disease. 
Still, the scripture cases are so many and so dramat- 
ically given, and there is, withal, a reason so profound, 
jast now, for a state of commotion among all powers 
of darkness, that they can hardly be reduced to any 
such construction. (2) The fact that so many cases of 
insanity, coming to our knowledge, have a demoniacal 
air and manner ; the subjects talking as demons, eall- 
ing themselves demons, and acting in a style of frenzy 
so unhumanly foul and malign. (3) The professed 
discoveries of magnetism, where one will is believed to 
subject another to its absolute sway, even across wide 
spaces of distance; and especially the revelations of 
necromancy, where one being, called a medium, offers 
himself to be played upon by whatever spirit, foul or 
fair, will come to possess him for its oracle—which 
oracle, it is admitted, will often be the utterance of a 
lying instigation. I know nothing of these matters 
save by report; I only perceive that they are making 
the world familiar with demoniacal possessions now, 
exactly answering to those of the ser ptures, on'y ander 


OF INSANITY. 263 


a different name. Instead of being laid, the bad spirits 
are now evoked; for the medium is a person offered to 
be possessed, and if the pretenses are true, actually 
getting possessed—all the parties engaged running 
down morally, as their habit of deference to the bad in- 
visible powers weakens their moral and responsible 
selfhood, till finally they are landed, one after another, 
in a morally dejected profligacy which is real insanity. 
We are brought out, thus, in the conclusion, that 
every human creature is in the way to insanity who 
allows himself to be possessed by any kind of impul- 
sion, outside of his own responsible self-keeping. The 
weakening of the moral nature puts the very bond in 
jeopardy that is to hold the mind together, and keep 
it in the order of reason. Any kind of possession has 
this danger, this hideous form of peril, connected with 
it. And when the insanity is fully completed in a 
state of total dispossession, an equally complete and 
even terrific warning is given, to every man who will 
maintain his reason, that he beware of any least sur- 
render which displaces the moral sovereignty of the 
soul, in the government of its own ways and actions. 
The great institute of insanity is partly designed, ne 
doubt, to yield this kind of moral benefit. It may be 
that the very cases of insanity that we are wont to call 
hereditary are so only in the sense that it is a family 
weakness to be overdriven, or possessed by engage. 
ments and objects that might be well enough shaken off, 
but are finally allowed to break the mind’s integrity. 
Fourthly, a due observation of the distinction be 


264 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


tween the state of sanity and that of insanity raises a 
conception of the beauty and dignity of the moral 
nature which ought to be impressive, and to yield the 
highest practical benefit. In this distinction we per- 
ceive what a human creature becomes—how wild, and 
weak, and helmless—when the capacity of responsible 
action is suspended. Before, he was in government, 
having thought, and memory, and will, and passion, 
all bound up in terms of personal unity and self-acting 
responsibility. Now, he is a sad-looking wreck, an 
pbject of forlornest pity, not because the faculties 
thus named are gone, but because the moral soy- 
ereignty or supreme moral nature that held them in 
right order is fallen off its throne. They are nearly 
the same men that they were before, only minus in 
that supremely great something, which puts them in 
obligation, or makes them capable of it. This one 
summit faculty gone, how different are they become! 
We define their insanity itself, by saying that they are 
not any longer responsible, or capable of being respon- 
sible, for their actions; paying thus a tribute how 
grand to the supreme dignity of the moral nature! 
We sometimes state the definition of their loss in a 
different manner, by saying that they have lost their 
reason. But we mean by this, if we understand our- 
selves, their moral reason. They understand causes, 
aud do acts of causation correctly. They frame propo 
sitions that connect subject and predicate, in as good 
logic as ever. They reason correctly in the sense of 
drawing conclusions out of premises. But they fail, it 


OF INSANITY. 265 


8 said, in the right perception of premises; which term 
“right perception” means such kind of perception as 
co-ordinates things in the scale of right, and holds 
them in their fit signification, as related to the practical 
working of the moral life. What Kant calls the Prac- 
tical Reason, by which he means very nearly the same 
thing as the moral sense, or morally sensing power of 
things and actions, is dislodged or broken. 

And we can see at a glance why it ought to be this 
power, this moral nature, that goes in the breakage of 
sanity. For whatever be its immediate cause in a 
particular case, it comes, in the large view, as one of 
the damages of evil, and evil is evil as having the total 
stress of its wars against the moral nature. We have 
on hand thus all the activities, or active functions and 
faculties, working in full play ; only the supreme moral 
self-dominion is gone, the power that colligates all the 
other faculties in terms of order and responsible action. 
Without this we are maniacs; with it, men. And 
what a lesson of respect and homage do we thus re- 
ceive for our simple moral nature—super-eminent, 
balanced in the poles of law, self-regulative, regulative 
toward all order and perfection, that which makes a 
manaman. Sometimes we do not like to hear of this 
moral nature, we have low bad thoughts concerning it, 
a prejudice or even a kind of animosity against it, and 
prefer to see men go by other parts and powers that 
overtop, we think, this kind of magistracy. And yet, 
when we come to the using of a man who is out of his 
responsibility, we can do nothing with him, make 

12 


266 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


nothing of him, hope nothing for him; he is a gas, 
thimney smoke in the wind, a combustible blazing in 
the fire, and no more. Or, if we gather up all his fine 
faculties and parts, and go into careful computation of 
their value, we find them to be worth just nothing; 
and, if we still may use the personal pronoun of the 
poor bereft one, it will be only to say that he is become 
just nothing. If the world kad no sun, we still might 
call it world, but it would be exceedingly difficult to 
find what it is. The moral nature is in like manner the 
sun of the soul, the gravitating center and light, and orbit- 
marking rule of all beside. All which we are given to see 
in convincing and most sad evidence, by these terrible, 
perhaps, we add, inscrutable insanities, that pluck the 
supreme orb, the moral nature, out of the soul’s sky. 

It may be that we do not consciously think all this 
when we fall upon a case vf insanity, and yet we have 
it tacitly or implicitly in us. We miss that glorious 
something in. the unhappy subject, which is a most 
dear something to us all. We turn away from God 
and duty still, it may be, and yet we feel that we carry 
a very great morally divine something with us, which 
it is a nearly total loss to lose. We have seen a fellow- 
nature broken down, despoiled of all capacity, by the 
loss of that benignant sovereignty, whose appointed 
office it is to conserve the soul’s unity and order. Re- 
pelling this benignant sovereignty, which holds such 
orderly command, and keeps the mind conserved and 
centralized in such high consciousness before its throne, 
what do we but waive the rule of the keeper, and chal- 


OF INSANITY. 267 


lenge a like discontinuance of reason? This kind of 
moral debate is silently raised how often in us all, when 
we go through the wards of a hospital, or encounter 
the maniac who was once our friend. 

We come now, lastly, to a whole chapter of uses that 
are doubtless intended for us in this most terrible of 
all providential appointments, and which must, to a 
certain extent, accrue from it ; though remaining to be 
more and more largely discovered in the future ad- 
vancements and more complete developments of human 
character. These frequent exhibitions of insanity ap- 
pear to be quite indispensable, as revelations carried to 
their extremity of something that is working more 
latently and gently in us all. We are not all insane, 
but we are in a kind of incipiency that must be recog- 
nized, if we are to exactly understand ourselves. We 
are not in perfect equilibrium and can not be, in evil, 
any more than the eye that has sand in it. Evil is 
against nature, and nature must accordingly receive a 
shock of at least incipient derangement from it. In 
this manner it results of necessity, not that we are 
‘nsane, but short of perfect sanity, practically unsane. 
We do not understand the world and the working of 
the world’s mind, save as we see it out of perfect bal- 
ance, and working more or less disorderly. We do, in 
fact, complain that it is unregulated, or out of complete 
regulation—which is so far a state of unsanity—and 
we ought to have it as a much more fixed opinion, and 
more constantly remembered fact, than we do. We 
can not manage ourselves rightly, or act our part rightly 


268 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


toward the world, if we do not recognize the general 
unsanity in this manner. 

Here, then, is the very great lesson we are to receive 
from so many examples of wreck and mental catas- 
trophe, holding it in constant recollection, both in our 
management of ourselves, and our judgment of others. 
And there is no end to the uses to be made of if, for it 
covers the whole ground of our moral conduct, in all 
the infinitely diversified particulars that make up a 
wise and beautiful life. On the other hand, there is 
no end to the mischiefs, and miseries, and disfigure- 
ments, any one will suffer, who goes into life acting on 
a different assumption ; viz., the assumption of his in- 
fallible, right-seeing sanity. 

Thus we need, every one of us, to know that we live 
in moods and phases, working eccentrically, sometimes 
more unhinged and sometimes less; sometimes in better 
nature and sometimes irritable; sometimes more dis- 
posed to jealousy ; sometimes more to conceit. Noth- 
ing looks fresh after a sleepless night; nothing true 
after an over-heavy dinner. A touch of dyspepsia 
makes the soul barren and every thing else barren to 
it—even the finest poem it turns to a desert. Any 
mood of gloom, in the same manner, hangs a pall over 
the sun, and even the very bones will sometimes seem 
to be in that mood as truly as the eyes. Opinion is 
sometimes bilious, sensibility morbid and sore, and 
passion, tempest-sprung, goes wild in all sorts of ram- 
pages. At one time we can be captious toward a 
friend, at another generous toward an enemy, at 


OF INSANITY. 269 


another about equally indifferent to bith. Now a 
wise man is one who understands himself well enough 
to make due allowance for such unsane moods and 
varieties, never concluding that a thing is thus or thus, 
because just now it bears that look; waiting often to 
see what a sleep or a walk, or a cool revision, or per- 
haps a considerable turn of repentance will do. He 
does not slash upon a subject, or a man, from the point 
of a just now rising temper. He maintains a noble 
candor, by waiting sometimes for a gentler spirit, and 
a better sense of truth. He is never intolerant of other 
men’s judgments, because he is a little distrustful of 
his own. He restrains the dislikes of prejudice, 
because he has a prejudice against his dislikes. His 
resentments are softened by his condemnations of 
himself. His depressions do not crush him, because 
he has sometimes seen the sun, and believes it may 
appear again. He revises his opinions readily, because 
he has a right, he thinks, to better opinions, if he can 
find them. He holds fast sound opinions, lest his 
moodiness in change should take all truth away. And 
if his unsane thinking appears to be toppling him down 
the gulfs of skepticism, he recovers himself by just 
raising the question, whether a more sane way of 
thinking might not think differently. A man who is 
duly aware thus of his own distempered faculty, makes 
a life how different from one who acts as if he were 
infallible, and had nothing to do but just to let himself 
be pronounced! There is, in fact, no possibility of 
conducting a life successfully on in that manner. If 


270 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


there be any truth that vitally concerns tke morally 
right self-keeping and beauty of character, it is that 
which allows and makes room for the distempers of a 
practically unsane state; one that puts action by the 
side of correction, and keeps it in wisdom by keeping 
it in regulative company. Just to act out our unsanity 
is to make our life a muddle of incongruous, half-dis- 
cerning states without either dignity or rest. There is 
no true serenity that does not come in the train of a 
wise, self-governing modesty. 

For the same general reasons we need, in maintain- 
ing a right treatment of the world, to understand the 
condition of unsanity in which it also lies. Our friends 
must not be infallible; our enemies must be allowed 
their just palliations ; our charities must not only cover 
a multitude of sins, but a great many weaknesses and 
blots beside. The mere crotchets of some men are to 
have as much respect as the over-wise judgments of 
others. Proud airs are to be had in compassion, com- 
monly, as revelations of disease, or lack in the function 
of self-understanding. 

Opinions are to have a certain allowance or liberty 
of error, because they are human. Motives are to 
be tenderly judged, because many thorns of evil are 
festering under them. There is not a bad thing felt or 
done, in all the wrongs of the world, that is not to be 
viewed understandingly, as being the wickedness of a 
creature partly weak and broken. And there is no 
best, greatest, noblest thing ever done, that is not 
partly to be more admired and partly less, because it is 


OF INSANITY. 271 


a deed that only some great inspiration coud shape in 
the molds of mortal infirmity. We can not, in short, 
level one of our judgments or actions toward the world, 
so as to give it a perfectly right and skillful treatment, 
without being duly aware of its unsane condition. 
Many, too, of the great moral questions are impos- 
sible to be answered rightly, when this fact is ignored. 
If we talk of development as the great want of man or 
society, it will be the development, if that is all, of 
unsanity, and toward unsanity. No development can 
help any thing which does not have corrective causes, 
whether discipline or gospel, working with it. Family 
order is family disorder, where nothing is attempted or 
allowed, but the simple growing of childhood. It 
were better not to be grown at all, unless there is some 
power to shape the growth that works correctively, by 
laws impressed and authority maintained. Public 
education is no handmaid of order and law, unless 
order and law are the handmaid of education. Moral 
weakness and distemper can be supplemented only by 
moral strength and the all-tempering sway of duty. If 
we talk of progress, or a law of progress, whether in 
society or character, there is no law of progress in 
mere living or continuance, when it is operated and 
molded by no guiding forces. Such mere continuance 
can do nothing better than to run the unsanity of 
nature down upon a savage state, which is, in fact, a 
kind of insanity bred in and in, and become incurable. 
Majorities are no reliable cure of public ills, unless the 
public ills are, somehow, gotten out of the majorities, 


272 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


Great gales of impulse, that mo'e whole nations, are 
not great inspirations or embodied wisdoms, as the 
immense numbers joined might seem to indicate,—the 
Crusades, for example, the French Revolution, the 
Southern Confederacy,—but they are great heats of 
unsanity rushing to their ultimation in frenzy. 
Insanity, we thus perceive, has an immense, far- 
reaching moral use, considered as an extreme of dis- 
possession that puts us duly in mind of our general 
distemper. We see it coming on by degrees, and 
culminating, here and there, in a complete overthrow 
of the moral nature. Then we consider what it was 
that was coming on by degrees, and discover the same 
kind of incipiencies and bad liabilities working in us 
all. So we understand ourselves, and what kind of 
keeping is necessary for us. We now make allowances 
for our moods, and the discoloration of our judgments. 
We steady our conduct of life by the laws of good 
manners, and keep it in right order by recognizing the 
moodiness and gustiness of our impulses. And so we 
meet the world as it is, do our duties to it in candor 
and charity, and are hurried away by no romantic 
expectations that promise a paradise without some recti- 
fying light and discipline to make it possible. We act 
from the moral nature in ourselves toward a moral 
nature in the world, looking for no remedy of the 
common distemper, save in that complete re-establish- 
ment of the moral nature, which is health and sanity 
for all. And this work of re-establishment, we know, 
is possible only in that grace of religion which is come 


OF INSANITY. 273 


into the world, “to heal all that have need of healing.” 
There is, in fact, no sufficiently real antagonism for 
insanity or unsanity, but that which is the divinely 
qualified antagonism of sin. Let the weary, heavy 
laden, sorely possessed mind of the world turn itself 
to Christ, and it shall find rest. And when we come 
to this, when as a race we drink at this fountain “the 
spirit of a sound mind,” we shall, for the first time, 
discover how far off we have been from sanity, and 
how beautiful a thing true, perfect sanity may he. 
1% 


XII 


OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS, 


Ir is a difficulty encountered by the Paleyizing, or 
Bridgewater school of theologians, that what they gain 
by their argument from design, they sometimes appear 
to lose by the discredit they bring on the ends for 
which designs are made. Thus, if we take it for a 
fact that the whole creation is a framework of design— 
every object, and creature, and member, being nicely 
adapted to its uses—then it follows of necessity, that 
all beaks and talons, all claws and cuspidal teeth, all 
fangs and stings and bags of venom, are adapted to 
their particular uses as accurately and studiously as 
any thing else is seen to be; and then again it follows 
that as some creative builder is shown to exist by so 
many tokens of design, the apparent badness of the 
design indicates a malign power in him, working just 
as evidently for ends not good. Various devices are 
planned, it is true, for turning the argument, but, as 
far as I have seen, with very little show of success. If 
then, it be as great a matter to discover the goodness of 
God as to discover God; if indeed we make no dis- 
covery of God at all when we trace him in designs 
that are related to ends either bad or doubtfully good, 


OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS. 275 


there ought certainly to be some explication of the 
difficulties referred to that is more satisfactory. 

Thus it is put forward by Kirby, that “all organized 
beings have a natural tendency to increase and mul- 
tiply,” and that Providence “sets necessary bounds to 
their increase, by letting them loose upon each other.” 
“Tn our first view of nature,” he says, “we are struck 
by a scene which seems to be one of universal conflict 
—man constantly engaged in a struggle with his fellow- 
man, laying waste the earth, and slaughtering its 
inhabitants; his subjects of the animal kingdom fol- 
lowing the example of their master, and pitilessly 
destroying each other.” And the solution which he 
thinks sufficient is that, “ unless the tendency to mul- 
tiply had been met by some such check, animated 
beings would be perpetually encroaching upon each — 
other, and would finally perish for want of sufficient 
food.” And why not as well let them perish in that 
way, as by devouring each other? What comfort is it 
to the lamb that a lion has eaten him up, and prevented 
the over-multiplication of sheep by the larger multi- 
plication of lions? Is it not also the precise point of 
objection here, that such kind of arguments look for 
the increase of just those creatures that are worthless 
and destructive, and a limitation of increase in the 
harmless and useful? Besides, how easy was it for the 
Creator to keep down the over-population of the animal 
races, by making them lese fruitful, or shortening the 
time of their life! 

In another connection, when speaking of animals 


276 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


“particularly injurious to man,” Kirby suggests that 
they have their object in “his punishment.” And this, 
he thinks, may be true, more particularly of “ those 
personal pests, that not only attempt to derive their 
nutriment from him by occasionally sucking his blood, 
as the flea, the horse-fly, and others, but of those which 
make a settlement within him, infesting him with a 
double torment.” But almost every kind of anital, 
as truly as man, suffers by injury from some other, and 
has in fact its pests without and pests within, after the 
fame manner. Are we then to say that every such 
animal is undergoing punishment? A far more general 
fact may indeed be true, viz., that the whole creation, 
animals and men together, is groaning in the common 
liabilities and corporate reactions of evil; which, if 
we call it punishment, is not a private dealing in terms 
of personal justice, but only a shock of general disorder 
in the world itself. 

At still another point, Mr. Kirby contrives to get a 
semblance of comfort in the supposition, that the 
tormenting insects are blood-letters which prevent the 
cattle from overfeeding by their annoyance, and so 
promote their health; also that man is compensated 
here, as regards the torment he experiences, “ by the 
care of the wise Physician, who prescribes the painful 
operation, and furnishes his chirurgical operators with 
the necessary knives and lancets.” But unhappily the 
amount of blood taken by such infestations is too small 
to support the argument, and the amount of poison or 
pain dispensed too large to allow us any though’ or 


OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS. 277 


care, whether some drops of blood are gone or not. 
If we could be let off with the blood-letting, taken 
without the poison, we should scarcely want any such 
cehirurgical analogy for our comfort. 

In still another place, Mr. Kirby launches a different 
suggestion, in which he appears to have a more theo- 
logic satisfaction; observing, with regard to “this 
constant scene of destruction, this never-intermitted 
war of one part of the creation upon another, that the 
sacrifice of a part maintains the health and. life of the 
whole, and the great doctrine of vicarious suffering 
forms an article of physical science. Thus does the 
animal kingdom, in some sort, preach the gospel of 
Christ.” The capitals in which this last clause is put 
do not appear to be wanted; for the meaning it con 
veys is sufficiently horrible, I think, without additional 
emphasis. That there is a really answering relation, 
between a bullock eaten by a grizzly and the death of 
the cross, is simply revolting. As little will a sparrow 
killed by a hawk be conceived to have died for the 
hawk, or a child for a viper that bit him, or a man 
for the gorilla that clubbed him in the wood. Such 
attempts at Christian argument are doubtless well 
meant, but they are, to say the least, very unfortunate. 

Dr. Paley himself handles the argument here with 
better effect. Admitting distinctly, at the outset, that 
* venomous animals and animals preying upon one 
another” are constructed with organs that must be 
referred to design, and obliged also to allow that “ we 
cannot avoid the difficulty, by saying that the effect 


278 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


was not intended,” he only imagines that our trouble is 
created by our ignorance, and that, having so many 
and preponderant cases of beneficent design discovered 
to us, we are required to have it as “a reasonable pre- 
sumption,” that the goodness of his purpose would 
sufficiently appear, if we understood his purpose more 
deeply. And exactly this we shall by and by see to be 
true, only we shall find the truth outside of all mere 
physical ends and reasons. Not satisfied, however, 
with this merely excusing way of vindication, he goes 
on to specify something which may “ extenuate the 
difficulty ;” (1) that the venomous creatures, for ex- 
ample, have their venom faculty only as a good to 
themselves, because it is the power by which they sub- 
due their prey, and so are able to feed their bodies— 
which is far as possible from being true of whole tribes 
of venomous insects, like the gnat, or mosquito, taking 
the sleeper off his defense, humming first their poison- 
ous note in his ear, to vex the quiet of his rest, and 
then having sucked their fill with his blood, leaving the 
poisonous toll of their blessing in the wound for com- 
pensation; the very complaint against them being, not 
that they kill, not that they get their living, but that 
they bestow their venom gratis, and with no conceivable 
reason; (2) that such kinds of venomous creatures and 
beasts of prey do not, after all, kill as many people as 
we think, and much oftener kill other animals and not 
men—a very small comfort, if we can not know that 
their venom does no killing at all but for good; (3) 
that the venomous species, vipers and rattlesnakes for 


OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS. 279 


example, stand guard, so to speak, for “whole tribes” 
that have a similar look and no venom—a very far- 
fetched argument, to say the least, which does not even 
show that the protected tribes are not themselves more 
terribly harassed by the venom of their protectors, 
than by the other enemies these are supposed to intim- 
idate, or affect with shyness; (4) that it is our fault, 
in which we are to blame ourselves, that we crowd 
after and annoy the venomous creatures, and do not let 
them have the dens and dry places where they belong, 
unmolested—a much better argument, if they did not 
crowd after us, into our cities, and houses, and cham- 
bers. 

Having exhausted this line of argument with little 
apparent success, he finally subsides into the same field, 
where Mr. Kirby is but a follower, showing how it was 
necessary, in order to keep the world full, that all crea- 
tures should be over-fecund in their increase, and then 
when the spaces are stocked to have such thinning off 
_ provided for, that all populations will be graduated by 
their supplies, and the contracted or expanded limits of 
their field. Thus he imagines, “that immense forests 
in North America would be lost to sensitive existence, 
if it were not for gnats, and that vast plains in Siberia 
would be lifeless without mice.” But the great difii- 
culty is to see what interest eternal benevolence has, 
whether in the population of gnats or of mice—how 
there should be any complaint of a lack of “ser sitive 
existence,” because there is a lack of gnats in the for- 
ests, if only there is enough of them in the populated 


280 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


regions; or why we should be much concerned for the 
plains of Siberia, because of the want of mice, as long 
as the cities and towns are so far from being “life- 
less” on that account. However this may be, it is 
really a considerable impeachment of Providence, to 
say that God can no other way limit the superfecundity 
of his creatures, than by giving them venom to poison, 
and claws to tear each other. God is conditioned only 
by what is absolute or unconditional; but venom-bags 
and claws do not belong to the absolute. 

There is plainly no solution for this difficulty which 
stops short in the mere physical economy, considering 
only ends and uses that pertain to mechanical and 
bodily conditions. Nobody ever saw far enough into 
God’s designs to justify him, who did not see far 
enough to distinguish what ends his designs are for; 
viz., the moral ends and uses of existence. This frame 
of things was never understood, and never will be, with- 
out going back of things; it is mere jargon otherwise, 
confusion, absurdity, poison, torment—any thing and 
every thing but rationality and goodness. Here, then, 
is our question—viz., whether any sufficient account of 
venom and destructiveness in the animal infestations is 
to be discovered in the moral wants and uses of exist- 
ence? And here we are met by the discovery— 

1, That a great part of the evils of life are on us pur- 
posely, and not by accident, or by any kind of fatality, 
or pantheistic necessity. Many of us would like to im- 
agine that our pests, and poisons, and various kinds 
of torments are at least not designed; that however 


OF TITE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS. 281 


they may come, they are only mysterious; or that if 
they must be allowed to be, in some sense, from God, 
the Universal Creator, it must in reverence be held, 
that he did not mean to have them as annoying and 
deadly as we find them to be. Then let any one dis- 
sect a talon, or a claw, or a carnivorous jaw, and decide 
whether there is any contrivance here for tearing and 
devouring flesh ; and whether any preparation for scent- 
ing is deliberately contrived, in the outspread nervous 
texture of the nostril. Whence came that terrible vise 
in the mouth of a shark, and whose invention is it? 
' That viper fang, both sharp and hollow, laid down flat 
upon the jaw when there is no occasion for it, but hung 
with pulleys of muscle to throw it up when attack is 
to be made, allowing it now, in the bite, to be pressed 
directly down upon a bag of liquid yenom deposited 
just under its roots—whose invention is this? Is if 
not plainly a deliberate contrivance, as truly, visibly 
deliberate as any injecting or ejecting engine in the 
world? And how many venomous creatures are there 
—-spiders, ants, ticks, scorpions, serpents, flies, mosqui- 
toes, centipedes, that have their bags of poison made 
ready, as the fearful artillery of their otherwise con- 
temptible life! Let no one imagine that such kind of 
artillery is not meant; there is no other that is gotten 
up with a machinery more skillful, or with better am 
munition. All that may be done with such tools is 
plainly meant to be done. Whatever else may be true, 
God has created venom, and we must not scruple to 
say it. If we have any conception of goodness that 


282 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


forbids this kind of possibility in God, then our God 
plainly enough does not exist, or the God that does 
exist is not he. The really existent God, as we can see 
with our eyes, is such a being as can use contrivance 
in adjusting the due apparatus, both of prey and of poi- 
son. And we need not scruple to confess a degree of sat- 
isfaction in this kind of discovery, showing that goodness 
js no such innocent, mawkishly insipid character, no 
such mollusc softness swimming in God’s bosom as 
many affect to suppose; that it has resolve, purpose, 
thunder in it, able to contrive hard things, when hard 
are wanted. No other impression is at all equal to the 
moral training for which we are sent hither. If we 
could not see distinctly that God is able to plan for suf- 
fering, and prepare the machinery to produce it, what 
we call his goodness would only be a weak, emaseu- 
lated virtue, which, if we should praise it, would not 
long keep our respect. One of the very first and most 
necessary conditions of a right moral government in 
souls is vigor; a will that is visibly asserting itself 
everywhere in acts of sovereignty that do not ask ow 
consent. It is better for us even to be shocked some 
times, than never to be impressed. Mere safe-keeping 
is not rugged enough to answer the moral uses of our 
life. Elemental forces, grinding hard about us and 
upon us, are necessary to the due unfolding of our 
moral and religious ideas, and it is in just these severi- 
ties of discipline that we afterward discover the deep- 
est counsels of beneficence, and the highest culminations 
of eternal goodness itself. 


OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS. 282 


2. We here perceive that not only dangerous and 
fierce animals are wanted as the necessary furniture of 
our discipline, but a large supply of annoyances, irri- 
tants, and disgusting infestations. We laugh at these 
creatures many times, and try to amuse ourselves at 
their expense, aud it might not be desirable to take 
them more seriously, but it is a very serious matter, 
nevertheless, that we have them to laugh at. Indeed 
it is even a fair subject of doubt whether we get as 
much real discipline, after all, from all the beasts of 
prey together, as we do from any single one of a half 
dozen tribes of pests that infest the world—ants, mos- 
quitoes, wood-flies, jiggers, and the like. A part of 
their value is that they annoy us enough to keep us 
awake, and if they sometimes keep us awake when we are 
really demanding sleep, it is not altogether ill. Unmo- 
lested sleep might settle us at length into lethargy. 
We want irritants to stir us up and nettle us into 
vivacity, as truly as we do the lull of music and breeze 
to quiet us. Besides, we are always trying to get the 
world into a law of happiness, as if that were the main 
errand here, or as if God made it and must needs take 
it to be the law of his will. How often do we say this, 
and sometimes we even set our speculation upon it, to 
show that so it must be It was very important, there- 
fore, to keep us off this ground, and worry and sting us 
away from it. And to this end doubtless it is that God 
lets in upon us, on our face, and hands, and whole bod- 
ily skin, such numberless troops of hostile infestation. 
They come with bite, and creeping feet, and slimy 


284 ,. MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


touch, and sting, and stinging voice. They break no 
bones, they stir in general no fear, they seem to have 
no errand that could not as well be dispensed with. 
And yet, they do bring irritations, annoyances, disgusts 
upon us, that have a considerable significance, and 
ought to have, must ‘have, a considerable use. Not all 
the elephants, and tigers, and hyenas, and crocodiles of 
the world, have a thousandth part of the power exerted 
by these on our feeling and temperament. And it isa 
great thing they do, when they only keep us off the 
folly of conceiving that God is principally concerned 
with us here to make us happy. Therefore he shows 
us that he is not, by instrumentations most unremorse- 
ful, most deliberately contrived; leaving us nothing less 
or different to believe, than that he is shaping us to 
good, moral good, let the happiness and all the fine 
computations of pleasures fare as they may. But these 
are things by the way; the grand determining reason 
for the existence of these creatures and the divine con- 
trivance in them is to be found, I have no doubt— 

3. In the fact that, in order to our highest moral ben- 
efit, there is a fixed necessity that we have a world so 
prepared in its furniture, as to be a representation of 
man to himself. It would be impossible to carry on our 
moral training, if we could not be insphered in condi- 
tions that reflect, express, and continually raise in us 
the idea of what we are. It is not enough that what 
may be known of God should be clearly seen in things 
that are made; other great purposes of existence can 
be secured only as we have images and a language to 


OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS. 285 


mirror the nature, and state, and moral quality of our 
action. The world must be a dictionary where objects 
are supplied, that may serve as bases of words mher- 
ently significant of what is in us to be signified. And 
it is here that Swedenborg comes in with his doctrine— 
whence derived I really do not know—of correspond- 
ences. Nothing is more certain, however he came by 
his doctrine, than that all moral terms of language 
suppose pre-existing terms of correspondence in the 
world’s objects, that fitly represent or express the moral 
ideas and facts of our personality. It is also remark- 
able that all most expressive words and images, in this 
department of speech, are derived from animals ; which, 
again, he says, were not created as we know them, but 
“exist from man.” By which I suppose him to mean, 
that while they exist, in a sense, from God’s appoint- 
ment, they take their evil type, whatever it be, from 
the evil in man. A similar thought appears to be 
laboring in the story of the curse reported in Genesis ; 
viz., that in some sense there is a general unmaking of 
the world by transgression, in which it changes type 
and falls with the fall of the occupant. So far, accord- 
ingly, it will be from man, bearing the expressional 
stamp of man; and it makes no difference whether it 
is changed after such a fall and by it, or adapted to it 
by anticipation. Be this matter as it may, all the 
animal types especially ; the bats, and owls, and un- 
clean birds of night; the tigers, wolves, foxes, alliga- 
tors; all the serpents, and venomous creatures, and 
base vermin, with all the disgusting or annoying in- 


286 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


festations of insect life, are appointed to serve grand 
purposes of benefit in the moral training of souls, 
Their destructive, poisonous, and loathsome nature, 
carrying all nicest, most deliberative marks of design, 
is good because it is evil; that is, because it expresses 
so faithfully what most needs to be expressed, in these 
four particulars: (1) the ferocity of our sin; (2) the 
venom principle there is in it; (3) the immense dis- 
turbing power it obtains, even under the limitations of 
our human insignificance; and (4) the interior efficacy 
it has in its working. These four factors let us con- 
sider more deliberatively, and each by itself. 

First, then, nothing is more certain than that evil, 
as a law of selfishness, begets rapacity, violence, and 
even a certain ferocity in wrong, which wants remind- 
ers set on every side, and a world packed full of images 
to show the picture of it; and then that these same 
images should pack the languages with words, to be 
the coins of interchange, description, observation, ac- 
cusation, reflective thought, concerning it. The moral 
uses of life would fail if the outward state were not 
made answerable and largely analogous to the state 
within. Hell in the bosom could not see or know it- 
self in a paradise. If prey is the element within, it 
must be duly objectivized in the element without. To 
say that animals are organized for prey, and made 
creatures of prey, just to keep down over-multiplica- 
tion, is to fool ourselves in a very slim pretext of phys- 
ical adaptation, and miss altogether the grand symbol. 
ism in the stupendous engineering of God for our moral 


OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS. 287 


and immortal benefit. Indeed, the only good point 
there is in that physical solution is, that the tribes 
thinned away are the least harmful and most useful, 
and the tribes of extermination that remain precisely 
those which are most utterly worthless and piratical ; 
for there seems to be some use in that, when taken as 
a revelation of the terrible devastations of wrong, ex- 
tirpating innocence always, and emptying the world 
of righteousness. Still there is not much in this; for 
it will be seen that, in the long run, the more harmless 
and useful animals, having a domestic value, will ob- 
tain defenders, and will over-live and over-multiply 
their destroyers, and will even stock the world after 
these are extinct. However this may be, the general 
purpose of God in these creatures of prey is plain as it 
well can be. They are given to be our kinsmen, the 
cousins-german of our sin. They are the moral furni- 
ture of a world in selfishness and evil. There is a kind 
of bad litany in them, howling congenially with all 
wrong feeling and doing. They not only kill and 
devour savagely, by sting, and fang, and beak, and 
claw, but some of the least of them march out man- 
nishly in columns and fight pitched battles, lasting for 
whole days; and they even take on airs of high civil- 
ity, by reducing fellow tribes to a condition of regular 
slavery; where, as they were heroes in fight, they be- 
come lords in mastership and exaction. Sometimes 
they work by satire, as in the case of the ants here re- 
ferred to; sometimes by terror, by spitefulness, by 
cunning stealthiness and tricks of decoy, by immense 


288 MORAL USES OF DARK ‘THINGS. 


deglutitions, by any and all sorts of animal habits that 
connect with prey, ferocities, voracities and disgusts 
that make it symbolic of evil. In this way they give us 
profitable company, and keep us at home in surround- 
ings morally adapted to the omnivorous habit of our 
sin—no very lionorable calling for them, but an excel- 
lently useful and even morally indispensable one for us. 

I proposed also to speak, secondly, of the venom 
principle incorporated in a great many animals, and 
especially of the moral analogy it fills in relationship 
with evil. The number of animals that have the gift 
of poison, and have bags of poison carefully prepared, 
in connection with a hollow sting, or bill, or fang, or 
claw, for the injection of it, is larger than many appear 
to know. Sometimes the object is to repel, or disable 
an attack, and is only defensive. Sometimes it is to 
incapacitate and prostrate the animal that is to be 
taken as prey, where it classes with all other contriv- 
ances for the capture of supplies. But there are cases 
where the venom appears to be dispensed gratis, just 
because it belongs to a venomous nature to put forth 
that kind of power. What can the venomous spider, 
or the venomous ant, Solpuga, mean, but simply mis- 
chief, when, creeping over a man by night, he vaccin- 
ates him with a mortal poison? The mosquito comes, 
we know, to get his supply of blood, and so we may 
not object; for if he is to exist, he must live. But the 
strange thing is that he pays for the blood he gets with 
the poison he leaves. His victim was asleep, we may 
suppose, and there was no resistance. All that he 


OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS. 289 


wanted he took, but he must needs distil a poison be- 
fore he goes; without any pretext of self-defense, or 
of doing it to capture supplies, but sometimes even 
waking his victim by it, after he has gotten his fill. 
It is as if the very bill of the animal exuded poison by 
the simple instigation of pleasure itself. Other infesta- 
- tions of the forest and the chamber impart their venom 
in a similar way, when, apparently, they have nothing 
to gain by it. What, then, does it mean, that infu- 
sions of venom have so large a place in the very con- 
trivance of so many animal natures? The natural 
theologians give us no plausible, or even tolerable an- 
swer. Their whole scheme of argument from design is 
at fault in this matter, and must be, till they ascend 
above the mere physical ends of contrivance, and behold 
those moral ends which are the sovereign, all-controlling 
reasons of God, in what he creates or designs. 

The fearful truth, never to be hid or lost sight of, 
though indignantly repelled by many, is that the state of 
wrong or sin in mankind goes beyond selfishness and 
the rapacious instincts of prey, and does sometimes be- 
come a venomous principle, doing evil because it is evil, 
perpetrating mischief because it is mischief, and havoc 
because it has that kind of power. More commonly, the 
erimes committed—arson, robbery, rape, murder—are 
such as gain or some hope of advantage instigates. In- 
deed, we seldom encounter examples where wrong is 
done for the mere sake of wrong ; though now and then 
we do meet even such. Our poor freedmen of the South, 
for example, hunted, whipped, hung upon trees, burned 

13 


290 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


up in their huts by night—what have they done, what 
are they going to attempt, that such barbarous severities 
are put upon them? The simple answer is, that men 
who are fiends will fulfill the definition, doing deeds of 
havoc, or of torment, for the enjoyment of it! Fearful is 
the truth that such beings can exist, appalling is the 
fact that they do. Even so madly inspired by evil is it 
possible for man to be. These hapless creatures, lately 
slaves, are free by no offense of their own. The hares 
of the wood are scarcely less capable of harm than they. 
No, their crime is that they have been injured; for 
as Tacitus, with true insight, declares, “ Whom a man 
hath injured him he hates.” Dear sport is it, therefore, 
to set them flying into the bush; music itself to hear 
them howl and beg under a limb! This element of 
mischief for the sake of mischief, not often displayed 
in as flagrant examples, still enters largely into human 
conduct. We have not made up the full inventory of 
evil, when we have simply shown what selfishness will 
do for selfish ends. Evil has a demonizing power, not 
working always by calculation, but sometimes by a 
spell, and becoming thus, by its own bad inspiration, an 
end to itself. So far there is nothing in nature to rep- 
resent it, or be its analogy. The revenge of elephants, 
the cunning stealth of foxes, the prey of wolves and 
tigers, the blood-hunger of leeches—not all the powers 
of damage and destruction wielded by all the animals 
can at all represent this kind of evil-doing. Only 
venom can sufficiently do it; and without the venom- 
bags, and bills, and fangs, and stings, and claws, the 


OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS. 291 


moral furniture of the world would not be complete. 
Evil for evil’s sake, disinterested evil, is the fearful pos- 
sibility and fact that must have signs and a language 
provided. In this office all the venomous animals do 
service, and more especially such as do not use thei 
functions for self-defense, or the conquest of supplies, 
but distill their poison gratis or without reason. 

Again, thirdly, it was necessary to a true understand- 
ing of our responsibility in evil-doing, that the plea of 
insignificance be taken away from us,—which: appears 
to be done most effectively by the fact that we are made 
to suffer so great torment or damage, often, by creatures 
of prey, or venom, that are exceedingly small. We are 
perfectly defenseless against them in a great many 
cases, because they are small. A single mosquito will 
defy and torture a man all night, when if it were a 
horse or an elephant, he would very shortly have him 

in control. A single jigger, scarcely visible to the eye, 
will hide himself under the skin and have a populous 
city there, before there is even a thought of such occu- 
pancy. The land-leeches of the woods of Ceylon will 
scent a man before he arrives, and, hurrying toward 
him, will dart their thread-like bodies through his 
clothing, pinning it to his skin, so that when he comes 
out, fifty heads will be pumping at his blood. Some- 
times the diminutive creatures come in armies, and 
there is no conquering host of men whose march is 
half as destructive, or half as difficult to resist. The 
weevil, the fly, the caterpillar, the army-worm, the 
locust, the military hornet, that “ drove out the Amor- 


292 MORAL USES OF DARK IIINGS. 


ites betore Israel”—who can withstand? When the 
latter locm up as a cloud on the plains of Syria, they 
fill the company of travelers with greater consternation 
than a water-spout, and set them flying madly every 
way, if only the torture permits,—otherwise they lie 
down with their animals and die. It is even reported 
that Sapor, king of Persia, was compelled by a cloud 
of gnats to raise the siege of Nisibij ; where the very 
point of contest lay between the gnats on one side, and 
his elephants on the other, and the latter were put to 
rout, with his whole army, just because the insect crea- 
tures had too great advantage over creatures in such 
mark for bulkiness and indefensible majesty. In all 
which examples we discover, that the most fearful, 
most perfectly irresistible enemies we encounter are the 
smallest, the mere living specks of the creation. They 
come in greatest power, be it as one or as many, and 
we are most appalled by them, because we are least 
capable of defense against them. In this manner they 
invert all our notions of size, and make diminutiveness 
a terror. So that when we shrink away from all terrors 
of responsibility, because we are practically dwarfed 
and sunk out of sight before the oppressive weight and 
magnitude of God, we have a mental correction already 
prepared, in the fact that size has come to signify so 
little as regards real power and consequence. There is 
no size, either in agents or actions, that has conse- 
quence. If we die for the bite of an ant, it signifies as 
much as that we die for the bite of a tiger. Doubtless 
God is a very great being, and it may seem that we can 


OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS, 293 


do little against his immensity, but all the more does it 
signify that we can sting the immense sensibility of his 
goodness. It is the moral significance of actions that 
creates their true guiltiness, not their size, or report, or 
show, or linear sphere of dimensional effect. The in- 
gratitude, the falsity, the venom, the poison, the mon- 
strous filthiness and corruption—these are the offense, 
and the measure is quality of meaning, not any bulk 
of movement or physical effect. We are not too small, 
however diminutive, to do great injuries to God, and 
move revulsions in his pure feeling that are only the 
more prodigious offense, because they wound sensibili- 
ties essentially infinite and infinitely tender. 

I proposed also, fourthly, to speak of these destructive 
and venomous animals considered as types of the in- 
terior working of evil. We might easily get occupied 
with wrong as a merely exterior affair—the annoyance, 
misrule, destructiveness, oppressiveness, and the num- 
berless inconveniences and desolations of it. Almost 
everybody is so far against wrong, and many are stir- 
red up by the dreadful miseries of it, to become re- 
formers against it. The danger was that we might 
always be looking outwardly to find it, and not realiz- 
ing at all the deep, all-penetrating, thoroughgoing 
infection of it—humanity pricked through with evil 
infestations and disorders might, perchance, not be at 
all conceived. What then does it signify, that we are 
not only beset with so many external infestations and 
infections, but are so commonly attacked within, by 
hideous creatures that undertake to be co-inhabitants 


294 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. : 


with us! It is no pleasant subject, but the naturalist 
are obliged in mere science to make out at least twenty 
species of these pestiferous creatures, that inwardly 
inhabit and are peculiar to man ; even as the cattle to 
the pastures, or the fishes to the sea. They fix on any 
organ of the body, too, according to their kind, from 
the brain downward, and many of them have such 
power that life is finally sure to be discomfited by 
them. A symbol so impressive can not but impress, 
and will even more deeply impress, when the revela- 
tions of science are more familiarly known. We do, in 
fact, have this impression largely verified in us, before 
such revelations arrive; we believe that powers of 
death are lurking everywhere in us, as that we are 
wrong in fact all through. The infection, we say, is 
deep, and mortality has the touch of every thing that 
lives—which touch is internal. That which is within 
defileth. The immense value of all such impressions, 
recognizing evil as infesting life at the core, is greater 
than we often imagine. We sometimes call it corrup- 
tion, imagining in the very word a kind of venomous 
action; all which is figure of course, representing the 
tremendous body-and-soul-dissolving infestations of evil 
working inwardly. Life has been so contrived, that 
we can not well miss the idea, however much or little 
we know of the verminous infestations referred to, as 
therapeutically discovered and scientifically taught. 
On the whole, I think it will be seen that the de 
structive and venomous animals of the world have a 
good reason for their existence. If there is any thing 


——_—— ee 


OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS. 295 


dark in their existence, it is not solved in the very 
shallow philosophy that supposes their introduction for 
mere physical ends. There is no solution massive 
enough, and grand enough, to meet the real scope of 
the problem, save that they are all the outfit and furni- 
ture of a moral system, and the uses such a system is 


_ ordained to serve. They belong to the revelation and 


fit discipline of evil, being symbols, physical analogies, 
such as draw their type from man, and not from the 
beauty and goodness of God. What he is they become 


for his sake; for in him, as a creature going into wrong, 


they all received their law and came forth, in their time, 
to work with him in the sad but really wild and terribly 
sublime history of his life. 


XIV. 
OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 


Wuen we speak, as Americans, of distinctions of 
color, or distinctions of races marked by color, we are 
neditating probably the existence, in particular, of the 
African or black race, and the possible reasons for their 
existence. Our attention is specially centered on them, 
because their existence heretofore as bondmen among 
us has been at so great cost, having shaken nearly to 
its fall the Republic itself; also because, being now 
emancipated by the fortunes of war, they bring us a 
most difficult problem, viz.: what to do for them, or by 
what kind of recomposition to prepare them a condition 
of hope and righteously protected liberty? Their con- 
dition, we are obliged to perceive, is a condition of 
immense disadvantage. How much of respect they 
might command by their own natural force and charac- 
ter, it is not easy to say; but the stigma we have our- 
selves put upon them by our wrong—this, if nothing 
else,—has thrown a crushing weight of disrespect upon 
them, such as makes it far more difficult for them to 
hold a self-asserting position among us. When consid- 
ering, too, by what means we can help their depressed 
condition, we are greatly discouraged by the fact, that 


OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 297 


their former masters will endure them in a condition 
of power, however qualified, only with difficulty, and 
are likely to break out, almost any day, in bloody con- 
epiracy against them; also by the fact that so many of 
yur own race will be making prey of them; and again 
by the fact that large numbers of them have already 
caught the poison of vices that will make them a prey 
to themselves. They become, in this way, a kind of 
mystery of unhopefulness; so that we can not pass a 
little colored child in the street, and especially one that 
is neatly dressed and has a look of careful motherhood, 
without sighing inwardly and sometimes with a moisten- 
ing eye—“ poor hapless one, what place or good possi- 
bility is therein the world for you? Growing up, you 
grow into what; for what can you be? Scarcely have 
you a right to be, or become, any thing ?” 

Perhaps we carry our pity too far; perhaps our want 
of respect for the race, partly caused by our own abuse 
of them, does not see as much that is hopeful in them 
as there really is. They discover often a remarkable 
talent, and there are certainly individuals among them, 
who have power to make a character and carve ont a 
way of success. There have been such examples dis- 
covered among the Indian races, but the difficulty has 
ever been with them to get such hold of the race, as a 
whole, that they could be put forward in culture and 
saved from extinction. It may not be so here; it proba- 
bly would not, if their friends in the white race could 
have them to themselves, separated from the plunder 


and poison of their enemies. But that again is impos 
13* 


298 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 


sible. They must take their places with us, and main- 
tain a footing for themselves in our society; and if we 
can not help them, and shelter them, by such protection 
here as will enable them to maintain it, they must in- 
evitably go under. e 

They are far more hopeful subjects of culture and 
civilization, in certain of their qualities and points of 
character, than the Indians. Their humanities are im- 
mensely large in comparison. They can have a sense 
of home. They are too genial for the dry revenge and 
prowling wolfishness of Indian life. They have world- 
fuls of music in their sentiment, and close to this a 
most wonderfully inspirational capacity for religion ; 


and these, in one view, are about the highest capa- 


bilities of man. All the higher, that they are con- 
nected here with a remarkable capacity or power to 
seize on the second sense or figure-power of facts and 
symbols, which is the distinctive mark of all true poetic 
faculty, and was never more conspicuous in the untrained 
habit and imagination of any people in the world. 
Such a race may never be distinguished in the matter 
of invention, or provisional and productive enterprise; 
but who can say that they will not have a sufficiently 
grand work to do in the world’s last days, when whole 
races of fresh-born prophets and singers may be wanted, 
to bear up the world to its last level of inspired eleva- 
tion, and free rhythmic play. The Jewish race, let us 
not forget, is also a generally disrespected race; and 
that, in great part, just because the sordid qualities 
that belong to their habit are forced upon them, and 


/ 





OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 299 


bred in and in, by the long ages of cruelty and oppres- 
sion they have suffered under Christian power; and yet 
we are obliged to admit, that they are among the most 
talented, if not the very most, of all the races of man- 
kind. 

In such kind of suggestions we make our sallies after 
hope; and still we are obliged somehow to fall back 
- under discouragement and a seeming overcast of doom, 
regarding the future of this hitherto ill-starred African 
race. It is as if their color was the stamp of night on 
their history, both past and future. They are in a case 
that perplexes beneficence, and discourages the expecta- 
tion of friendly statesmanship; and we are put here to 
the question, how it was and why, that Providence 
allowed them to be entered into our more advanced 
society —a condition so unhopeful, so nearly impos- 
sible to them, and so perplexing and full of oppressive 
concern to us. Getting no satisfactory answer, in this 
matter of historic providence, we go farther and begin 
to arraign the fact of their creation; asking why God 
should have put a race in existence encumbered with 
such disadvantages? Their dark faces veil a darker 
mystery ; and the more we are drawn to them, by their 
free good nature, and the warm humanities we learn 
often to admire in their friendship, the more heavily 
are we oppressed by the very hard lot so mysteriously 
put upon them, in the unfavored type of their race. 

Is it possible then—this is our question—either to 
mstance, or to imagine, any reasons of beneficence that 
will practically account for their misfortune, or make 


300 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


us less disposed to question the divine goodness in their 
creation? I think it is, and that if we carefully attend 
to the real conditions of the problem, we shall discover 
such benefits secured by the distinctions of color and 
type here in question, as will greatly diminish our per- 
plexities, and make the colored race themselves more 
nearly content with their lot. In this view I put 
forward— 


1. What is certainly a matter of great moral signifi - 


cance for humanity at large, the very certain fact, that, 
under this distinction of races, we arrive at a very dif- 
ferent, vastly more cogent, impression of the under- 
soul, the man, the everlasting, divinely moral person- 
ality, such as we should never develop under conditions 
of strict homogeneity. If the various stocks and 
families of the world were copies visible, one of another, 
and each of all, the immortal, spiritual nature, the real 
man, would be swamped to a great degree under the 
reigning similarities. The external duplications would 
occupy us, or take us away from those inward explora- 
tions, which great external distinctions would provoke. 
These distinctions put us on a way of abstraction, Sy 
which we cast off this and that, and all the more im- 
pressive unlikenesses of the external nature, till we come 
down, by our process of exclusion, to the grand common 
property or somewhat, that refuses to be taken away; 
and this we say is thestock man, that which, being duly 
housed, gets also its due exercise under all the particu- 
lar colors and types that are given it. As a result of 
this abstractional process, we learn to look upon the 


OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 301 


properties excluded as having only a lighter and more 
secondary consequence; while the unreducible diamond 
of the moral nature, that which forms absolute ideas 
and receives their immutable stamp in its character, 
proving in that manner its plainly godlike affinities— 
that we say is the man, the everlasting man, the same 
as to kind, under all colors and aspects and configura- 
tions. 

It is not pretended that we all consciously reason in 
this manner, for we do not. Most of us probably were 
never conscious of any such process in our lives. I only 
say that, without being aware of it, we get our impres- 
sion largely of the common timber included in our 
moral word, man, in this manner. We have seen, or 
heard of very different kinds of peoples; and throwing 
off the accidents of difference, we strike directly in upon 
the core, and say: These are the real humanities. We 
have them, too, in this manner, with a wonderful dis- 
tinctness, such as we could not arrive at without some 
purchase of antagonism or point of reaction physio- 
logically given, to set us in upon the true discovery. 
The distinctions of color and race will sometimes strike 
us, for the moment, with such force that we seem to be 
etunned or confounded, and so, and for so long a time, 
the sense of a common unity is quite driven out of us; 
but our next thought strikes through the casement of 
color and body into the men, and the word has a ring 
of eternity and true moral significance, more distinctly 
pronounced than we could ever get for it under any one 
given type and color. 


302 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


Certain low-minded scorners of the African race, who 
are willing to insult them by any most cruel caricature 
of their physical type, and would even delight, if pos 
sible, to put them outside of humanity, compare them, 
under mock pretensions of science, with the African 
gorillas and chimpanzees, as if separated from them 
only by slight shades of difference. Suppose, then, it 
should be discovered that these mere animal creatures 
of the forest, such as we have supposed them to be, still 
have endowments of humanity like these:—They are 
capable of home. They do not simply love their child- 
ren till they are grown up to maturity and then shake 
them off like the animals and forget them; but con- 
tinue to live with them till they die; and want them 
nigh, even to the third and fourth generation. They 
do not work by instinct, like bees and beavers, but use 
new methods and contrive new arts. They discover 
laws in things, and have beginnings of science. They 
frame political organizations, and maintain distributions 
of justice. They have the same absolute ideas of truth, 
and right, and love, that men have. Hairy and wild 
creatures to look at, they have, nevertheless, a remark- 
able capacity for music, and their music has power to 
move the deepest, finest human sentiment. They have 
the gift of language, not only recollecting certain snere 
names to go at their call, as many animals do, but they 
take the interior, second sense of words, and the 
spiritual meanings or expressions of figures and images ; 
which proves their intelligence [intus lego] and puts 
them clean ove: into the humanly intelligent class, 


OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 303 


Nay, they can do more: they can improvise ballads that 
have a mysteriously wild, weird power, and even 
excite a certain wonder in the literary classes of the 
world. They are, furthermore, plainly and even super- 
latively religious, capable of high inspirations, and 
abounding in examples of practical beatitude and seer- 
ship. What now shall we say of these quadruman 
people? We encounter no little disadvantage in the 
fact that we know them to be, physically speaking, 
animals, and nothing else. But no matter for that, if 
only we can hold our supposition firmly enough to make 
due account of the mind-tokens and spiritual capabili- 
ties discovered in them. Call them, after that, by what 
name we please—they still are men. ‘They are not 
physiologically descended from the stock of Adam. 
But, if they were, it would not make them a whit more 
certainly human. By all the moral attributes they 
reveal, we even hear them say, with invincible self- 
affirmation, “we also are men.” And by just as much 
closer as they draw themselves to us, do they shove 
themselves farther off from the animals. They have 
come over to us, where the African race have always 
been, by force of the same high attributes; and the 
chasm that separates them now from all animals is on 
the other side, wide and deep as the unfathomable 
abyss between time and eternity. And the grand 
result is, that they sink all inferior distinctions of 
anatomy and color, and make us feel, as never before, 
how real and solid, how essentially everlasting, that 
moral nature, that sublime under-soul is, that we name 


804 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


when we call ourselves men. The moral advantage 
derived to us, in this manner, from the distributions of 
color and physical type in humanity, is great beyond 
our possible estimation; accruing to the benefit of laws, 
and liberties, and morals, and religion, by methods too 
numerous for computation. We think humanity more 
adequately because of it. Our genus man is not based 
in similarities of shape and color, but far deeper 


down, upon the hard-pan of an everlasting common 


property, which no classifications of shape and color 
can as decisively express. 

2. It is another and partly distinct matter, that these 
diversities of race and color, exactly contrary to what is 
commonly assumed, are preparations of God for the 
outruling of slavery, and its final expurgation from the 
world,—proved to be such by experiment. Such dis- 
tinctions of physiology do undoubtedly connect with 
a condition of weakness and low culture, that exposes, 
at first, to the wrong of slavery; but they begin, at the 
same time, to beget, and more and more intensify, the 
sense of kinship asa moral affair, till finally the slavery 
dies out under that which, taken as mere natural inferi- 
ority, was the principal facility and temptation to it. 
The remarkable thing about all our modern agita- 
tions against slavery is, that the question has been 
drawing closer and still closer down upon the last point 
where, in fact, every thing hinges, and where, as the 
debate is carried, the result will be final—there will 
never again be. as there never again can be, any re 
institution of slavery, because the question is now 


OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 305 


settled, or is soon to be, on the base of a moral kin 
‘ship. 

First we had slaveries of all races, more com- 
monly such as were homogeneous. The early Romans 
captured and reduced to slavery the very peoples closest 
about the city. And these enslavements of races, in 
the same type, color, and culture, were the most cruelly 
severe the world has seen, and gave way soonest, partly 
for that reason, to considerations of public humanity. 
The argument came out now and then, and could not 
be suppressed, that such persons were too close akin, 
too visibly of one stock, which made the enslavement a 
shocking violation, as visibly, of nature. But the modern 
slavery is based more entirely on dissimilarities of stock, 
and grades of form and color assumed to be physically 
inferior. The discovery is made that here is a race or 
races, purposely made for slavery, and that slavery is 
the best possible condition for them. At this point 
the issue has been joined, and the argument for liberty 
has been that real human kinship is not a matter of the 
skin, or the hair, or the physical anatomy; but is of 
just that which we have seen tobe more impressively 
’ developed, under and by means of such animal dis- 
tinctions; viz., the fact of a grand common property . 
in our moral nature, by which, as being men, we are 
made everlastingly congener to each other. The ques- 
tion ceases, in this manner, to be a question of mere | 
natural sentiment, and becomes a question of relation- 
ship purely moral. On one side the effort is to insist 
on physical inferiorities; on the other, to make nut the 


. B06 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 


proof, by that very means, of a common under-soul, in 
which all are members of a universal, everlasting 
orotherhood. And just here it is that the question 
is being carried against slavery forever. It is no more 
a question of power against weakness; no more a ques- 
tion of the cuticle or the hair; but a question of moral 
right in one, assuming, as by force, to buy and contro] 
the moral right of another. We are learning to say: 
“No, it is impossible ;” and that is the end of slavery 
forever. 

Some persons have insisted much of late, and are 
even pressing the argument now, as against colored 
suffrage, that the African race are not of the same orig- 
inal stock with us, but are one of several distinctly 
created families, in the manner suggested by Prof. 
Agassiz, and by him positively asserted, both on 
grounds of science and of Scripture evidence. Our 
common belief has been different, and is not given up, 
viz.: that conditions of climate, and social disadvantage, 
have set this particular race, originally one with us, 
gravitating downward toward a less capable and more 
nearly animalized habit ; and that so they have passed 
into their present type of form and color. We have 
taken, heretofore, what the Scripture says of our com- 
mon sonship “in Adam,” and of our being made “ of 
one blood to dwell on all the face of the earth,” as a 
literal declaration of our natural kinship and common 
derivation. Besides, it appears to us not a whit less 
credible, that the African race, put browning and bak- 
ing under tropical suns for whole thousands of years, 


OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOk. 307 


should have undergone so great a change, than that 
our American stock itself has been differed so widely, 
in its physiology, from the English, in but two centu- 
ries and a half. Ourwholetemperament is changed, our 
muscle is more wiry and capable of endurance, our 
brain is larger, our features sharper, our whole action 
more subtle and mercurial, and our mark distinguish- 
ably higher in the tables of longevity—in short, we are 
no more the same people. Not even the French stock 
are more visibly distinct from the English than we. 
Still we are far less concerned about this doctrine of 
another, distinctly African, stock, than we are about 
the very offensive and morally bad uses made of it. It 
may seem to us that they have a considerable advantage, 
as regards mere feeling, in the physical kinship we have 
allowed them. And yet, if they are to be taken asa 
race so fatally humbled by deterioration, it may put 
them in a case that is really far less hopeful, than to re- 
gard them as an original race, not yet raised by culture 
to their true pitch of power and possible eminence. If 
I were of the race, I should certainly prefer the latter. 
For, in this latter view, they lose nothing of their rank 
asmen. To be “of one blood” with us signifies littie 
by itself—nothing but a mere natural kinship—about 
as much as that calves may bleat responsively, in the 
sense of their fellow nature among cattle; but to have 
the common under-soul, and common properties of kin- 
ship with God, and be another original stock by our 
side, and as such congener with us in all the moral 
affinities of our interior manhood—this is the really 


308 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


grand footing most of all to be desired. By what kind 
of rebuke then may we more fitly chastise the coarse, 
low-minded insolence of men, who fling it as a taunt 
upon the African race, that they are of another stock, 
than simply to ask, whether possibly it is not God’s 
plan to finish this race last, and set them on the sum- 
mit, when their day shall come, as the topstone of all 
righteous peace, and most inspired religion ? 

Recurring now, in the light of these suggestions, to 
the historic phases and facts of slavery in the past ages, 
we see more understandingly what has been going on. 
As a good type of the more ancient slavery, that which 
had no respect to race, we see the great Roman empire 
scouring the vast circuit of the nations in expeditions 
of conquest, from Britain round to Babylon, and from 
the Baltic round to the Great Desert, taking thousands 
and thousands of captives, and setting them off in trails, 
from every point of compass, toward Italy. Solda 
dozen times_over on their way, and haying as many 
fortunes made out of them, they were poured in upon 
the Italian cities and farms to work and die. Some of 
the great landholders bought as many as twenty thou- 
sand of them, and had a complete power of life and 
death allowed them by the public laws. If any master 
was killed, all his slaves, within a given distance, were 
put to death. Many of the slaves were persons of rank 
and high personal accomplishments. And, what is above 
all sad to think of, the hardest, most unpitying severi- 
ties of service fell to the lot of women. The vast 
bread-supply of all families and cities was ground by 


OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 309 


mills that were operated by women, and at this terrible 
wrench of toil, the fair daughters of Corinth, and the 
wild maidens of Thrace, and the stately matrons of 
Carthage, were all compelled to serve. Mercy appeared 
to be a thing forgot. There was no sensibility thought 
of or expected. A slave must be a slave, and there 
was no place for tenderness, be his kind or country 
what it would. How perfectly bereft of human pity 
for these captives the highest, most approved virtue of 
their owners could be, we may see distinctly, looking 
into their bosom as through an open window, when the 
horrid old virtue-dragon, Cato, censor-general of the 
morals of his time, gives written advice to the farmers 
to have it as a law of economy—and economy to him 
was virtue—‘to sell worn-out iron implements, old 
slaves, sick slaves, and other odds and ends that have 
no further use on the farm!” There was no debate of 
right in this kind of slavery for along time. Nations 
were natural enemies, and slavery was the natural 
punishment of enemies. 

At length a new chapter was opened by the importa 
tion of negro slaves from Egypt. And these were very 
much sought after, because the public feeling was get- 
ting drugged by so great severities, and the critical 
task of managing so many great people. The new 
Africans were bought as household toys and ornaments, 
“valued for their complexion, and considered luxuries.” 
Finally, after some ages have passed away, the modern 
slavery emerges in just this form. It takes possession 
of the African race, and thinks it no crime to appro- 


310 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


priate their labor, because they are so very inferior, 
that having a master is having their natural privilege. 

They are not going to be captives, every way as re 
spectable as their masters; but they are going to be 
things procured by commerce, and convenient, every 
way, to be so used—done up in a different color, which is 
to be the police-mark of their ownership. But the 
Christian sense of the world begins to look into this 
matter of color, and it comes out, more and more dis- 
tinctly, that, under it, there are moral personalities, 
brothers of an everlasting, divine brotherhood, creatures 
of thought, and speech, and music, and vision, and hay- 
ing all most inborn rights of such. And so, by going 
down a stage, where color will cover it, slavery draws 
the argument down, to just that point where it is itself 
going to be weakest, and most certainly doomed to give 
way. In this manner it is now, in our own day, close 
upon its end, and it will soon be gone, never more to 
be seen. Farewell to it; for with it goes the rankest 
poison of private virtue, the worst blight of society, the 
most fatal incapacity sin has begotten for public law and 
liberty. From this point onward the world may breathe 
more freely ! 

3. It isa great thing, as regards the moral training of 
life and society, that distinctions of color and race help 
us to arrive-at just conceptions of human equality. 
We begin, as already suggested, in a way of abstraction, 
casting off the inequalities that visibly inhere in one 
stock compared with another. So far there is no equal- 
‘ty. Brought down thus upon the inner properties of 


OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 311 


manhood, we are met by the discovery that individuals 
of the same race are certainly not equal, whether in 
quantity of being, or capacity of doing. Single persons, 
again, of a race that is inferior, will sometimes have a 
larger, more capable nature, than others of a supericr 
race. So far, we find no base on which to build a 
scheme of duty that makes everybody the exact equal 
of everybody. On the contrary, a great part of the 
duties of life are based, and must be, in the fact that 
men are unequal; some inferior, some superior; some 
elected to power and leadership, and some to homage 
and trust. Every thing here will depend on how much 
of personal quantity and soul-force different men may 
have for their endowment; how much reason, con- 
science, love, will, vision, music, science, and worship, 
they have room for; and then it will be seen what pre- 
cedences they are to yield, what deferences to pay, or 
what patronages to assume, what forward conditions 
to support. Thus far, the true beauty of life will con- 
sist in a due observance of inequalities ; every man con- 
senting to be himself, and let everybody else be himself 
too, in his own true measure. But, carrying our ab- 
straction one degree farther, we do, at last, arrive ata 
stage of true unquestionable equality. Excluding all 
distinctions of type and appearance, and all diversities 
of quantity and force, we have left us an exact sameness 
of species. That is, we are all men, all moral natures, 
so completely akin to each other that truth to one is 
truth to another, right principle to one right principle 
to another, God, and love, and worship, and joy the 


a 


312 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


same to all. So that here an almost new code of duties 
dawns on our discovery, assisted, in a marked degree, 
by the antagonisms of color, and the strange counter- 
envisagements that make sameness of kind so conspicu- 
ous. In this new code of equalities, our ripest, finest 
moral culture is to be perfected ; and many have a large, 
long lesson here to learn, who do not yet imagine it. 
For there is a whole high tier of virtues opened here, 
that are really the most delicate of all, and have the 
finest mold of dignity. They are such as take note of, 
and observe, what belongs to sameness of kind; virtues 
that we class under the words deference, consideration, 
and the like. They are such kind of acts, as pay re- 
spect to man in that he is man; reflections, so to speak, 
of the respect a man has to himself. Consideration is 
a word that covers a whole class of virtues that, in 
beauty of soul, exceed all others. In that beauty it 
says: “ This isa man, thus much I must observe in that 
he isa man. I must not wound his respect, must not 
violate his feeling. As he is a being in my own nature, 
I must do honor to him in that nature, as my fellow ; 
I must do him true man-help for his manhood’s sake.” 
And how beautiful is the opportunity given for this 
late-growing kind of excellence, in the distinctions of 
race so often trampled by coarse insult, and wanking 
words of contempt! 

When we come to assert our bill of rights in the 
State, rights that, in our American doctrine of liberty, 
are supposed to be included in the principle that we 

re ‘created equal,” we are to base our civil equality 


OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 313 


just where we do our moral. We are equal and have 
equal rights, simply in the fact that we are all men, 
having all a right to be treated as men, and one 
as truly as another. If one is lame, another poor, 
another untaught, another varied by the color of 
his skin or the crisp of his hair, yet they are all men, 
and the law must do no disrespect to the equal and sub- 
lime right which inheres in their manhood. If the ques- 
tion be whether, as men, they have inherently the right 
of suffrage, the true answer is No; that right belongs 
to nobody as of course. A government may be every way 
legitimate which acknowledges no such right—what- 
ever may be asserted by reformers and constitution- 
mongers to the contrary notwithstanding. But as the 
world advances, this prerogative of suffrage will be 
naturally extended ; for, as the world is capable of it, 
and will be more capable of benefit because of it, a 
wider concession of it may be rightly demanded. And 
then, if it is conceded, it must be done equally, or im- 
partially. If it is conditioned by sex, or age, or prop- 
erty, or ability to read, then it must be so conditioned 
for all. But if color is made the condition, then man- 
hood is not, and equality is so far denied. Such law is 
but a name for oppression, whether it be a law of Con- 
necticut, or of South Carolina. It may be difficult to 
establish, in certain parts of our Union, a basis of right 
so impartial; it may even cost us scenes of blood; but 
we have learned to bleed for our principles, and the 
duties we owe to our sublime future may help us, if we 


must, to do more of it. 
14 


314 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


4. It belongs to the genius of Christianity to prove 
itself by remarkable inversions of order, which it may 
well do here. It never moves in the same lines with 
policy, or state craft; considering by what combina- 
tions it may obtain weight, or by what wisely projected 
wars it may extend its dominion; neither in the same 
lines with philosophy, where the uncultured multitude 
are of no account, and the school is to win its success 
by the number and high intellectual distinctions of its 
pupils; but it begins with low-grade men, descending 
itself into their low grade of life. It begins at Naza- 
reth, and is, morally speaking, born there, and Nazareth 
is the name of a mean provincial town that carries 
ignominy in the sound. It takes for its first disciples 
a company of Galileans, and these, unlettered fisher- 
men. And from that day to this, it has been a gospel 
specially preached to the poor, and has raised great 
movements in the world by heaving continually up- 
ward; seldom by taking hold of powers at the summit 
of society and working downward. And the reason for 
this very singular inversion of order is not, that God 
prefers to let nobody have the compliment of his work 
but himself, or that he is set in willfulness and jealous 
self-assertion against the great and forward men who 
might move on his cause more rapidly. No, the real fact 
is that nobody can be duly taken hold of by the gospel, 
but the meek or humble. The wise, and prudent, and 
great, know too much, and are too full of their prodi 
gious over-wisdoms, to really believe; only the babes 
of poverty and obscurity can do that, so as to verily 


OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 315 


come into the gospel as it is. Paul was accepted as a 
man of learning, it is true, but he was so completely 
humbled by the hand of God upon him, as to be truly 
schooled into his place. Constantine also was allowed, 
as a king, to come into the fold, and it was a really dark 
dispensation; for the fold had a very heavy load to bear, 
when he put his kingcraft down upon them and their 
gospel. Accordingly it is one of the most remarkable 
facts of our Christian history, that it has been always 
exalting them of low degree, and setting them in ad- 
vance of the lofty and the proud. It has been the king- 
dom of the weak, and has thrown itself up into power 
by the tremendous underlift of its humble, once dejected 
people. 

For a truly observing, richly experienced Christian, 
therefore, it will be difficult, I think, not to anticipate 
another great turn of Christian history, to be sometime 
accomplished by another more sublime inversion of 
order than has ever yet been seen; I refer of course to 
the possible consummation of our gospel by the uplift- 
ing and spiritual new birth of the African race. In 
their present low state of culture they do not bear a 
hopeful look, but in certain points of quality and tem- 
perament that are most peculiar in them, they seem to 
be contrived, and made ready for some such grand final 
chapter of inversion. They are now the true Nazarenes 
and Galileans of the world—they are humble enough, 
and they know how to believe. It has been the great 
defect of what are called the western nations, that they 
speculate overmuch, and strangle the gospel, or make 


816 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


it small, by trying tc think it in their own small heads. 
They receive the inspirations of it cautiously of course, 
and only partially. But these Africans are constitu- 
tionally inspirable, and when they get far enough ad- 
vanced in culture to be carried evenly, without excess, 
or undue heats of frenzy, and the clatter of our specu- 
lation is so far spent as to allow silence in heaven for a 
space, what may be more properly expected than a 
grand, prophesying testimony by these Africans, heard 
at the top of the world? Their gentle, friendly nature, 
tempered by the necessary culture, will make them pop- 
ular, as their history makes them cosmopolitan, and the 
long affliction of their history will prepare them, not 
unlikely, to a kind of cosmopolitan precedence that 
moves no jealousy. Besides, the contempt of their per- 
son is now gone by; for how certainly is every worst 
complexion or worst texture of skin fined toward qual- 
ity, by character and culture; and how easily, by varia- 
tions how evanescent, are the lubber-lines of a wild, 
rude nature put flowing into grace and fair proportion, 
when the plastic hand of Christian beauty lays its touch 
upon them. . Call them black, they will yet be written 
“black but comely,” and our races most advanced in form 
will, it may be, have no gift of beauty more unqualified. 
When the believing throngs are gathered in therefore 
from the East and the West, and the North and the 
South, to sit down together in the kingdom, even as 
Christ has given us to expect, what is more easy to be- 
lieve than that our long ago despised African brothers, 
now despised no-longer, will reveal the meaning of 


OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 317 


their late-maturing, last-day gifts, their capacities of 
vision, and music, and song, and will let us hear the 
harps they carried in their bosom strike into play in the 
customary inspirations of religion? Their “ word of 
the Lord,” breaking into the old literature, will be like 
the prophet’s word to the bones, and, for aught we 
know, will be darting along the wires of the world— 
bulletins of trade and diplomacy all still—as the fresh- 
est, newest news of the kingdom. 

This appears, it may be, quite extravagant—extrava- 
gant enough to be weak—but we have it to say, that it 
is the genius of Christianity to work these grand inver- 
sions, and that we have, in this very singular people, just 
the qualities and seed-gifts which long ages of culture 
and piety may lift into a precedence of so great beauty. 
It is not said or expected with confidence, that so great 
honors are to be won by the race, or find their realiza- 
tion here in this country. They take their places here 
under great disadvantages, and their friends, doing all 
they can for them, will suffer many misgivings. What 
shall save them from their enemies? what from them- 
selves? Perhaps they were allowed to be brought 
hither, that they might obtain conceptions of society 
and government for Africa; perhaps to open a way into 
the English tongue and its books, and so into the possi- 
bility of creating an Anglicized Africa. However it 
may be with them here, Africa, we suppose, will con- 
tinue in its own sable color, and be covered in the 
course of ages with new and populous commonwealths. 
The nations that come first into history do not of 


318 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


course rise highest. The Babylonians and Egyptians 
and Persians had their day early; the Syrians, Cartha 
ginians, Greeks, and Romans, came after, also to die 
Then came along much later the German, Anglo-Saxon, 
Gallic races, all to reach a higher mark of power and 
civilization. Perhaps the Africans will come up late 
enough to be last, rising into great inspirations as their 
forerunners have into great wealth, and science, and 
heroism. The European nations are not likely to settle 
Africa, because of the climate—Africa must belong to 
the Africans. And it is right proper for them, if they 
may, to make it a last, new sphere of righteousness and 
peace; the best and most nearly divine it has been 
given to the world to see. 


XV. 
OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIF, 


Ir is difficult to maintain as much sympathy as, 
perhaps, we ought, for that class of people who are 
always bewailing the mutability of earthly conditions. 
For the dark things they encounter so complainingly 
have their darkness, mainly, in the blind self-sympathy, 
that has shut away the manlier functions of intelli- 
gence. Indeed, we could hardly speak with patience of 
persons in this mood of affliction, were it not that some- 
times very great and sudden changes do occur that are 
stunning surprises to everybody, and even throw the 
mind of the sufferer off its balance, for a time, by the 
tremendous shock they give it. What these may say, 
when the tempest is on them, and before the whirl of 
their brain is settled, will, of course, be pardoned. 
Still, generally, it is not such that are most apt to 
complain, or can not manage to receive the shock in 
silence, but it is the drooping, low-tempered, half-manly 
souls, that think they have a right to be afflicted, be- 
cause the world refuses to keep such gait as they would 
have it. They find themselves at sea, though but a 
little way off the shore, and begin, before encountering 
any specially rough weather, to make a point of being 
sea-sick because of the element. Their difficulty is 


820 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


that they give way to their temperament, and let it 
keep them moping, or moaning, when a little more 
counsel taken of thought and reason would steady 
their vigor and keep them erect. They would no more 
pine over their changes, and have it, as the lamentable 
poetry of their life, to repeat— 


“Naught may endure but mutability,” 


but they would rather like the whirl of their vehicle, 
and even laugh at an occasional jolt in the passage. 
Of course they will be tried as we all are; bright prom- 
ises will fade, friends will betray them, fortune will 
vanish, health will break, a great many troubles will 
- overtake them, and a great many annoyances invade 
their peace; but if they have only some just opinion 
of life and of what is wanting in it, they will never take 
the mood of self-sympathy or dejection, as if some very 
strange thing had befallen them. They will even keep 
their feet the more stiffly because of their changes. 
Now, the fatal omission of those who take the more 
dejected key, and are much in complaint respecting 
life’s changes, is, that they have never made discovery 
and due account of the fact, that what we call muta- 
‘ bility, apart from the fickleness of evil, is nothing but 
the Jaw of motion, or mutation, as included in the ne- 
cessary progress of motion. In other words, God has 
made us not simply to be, but to move, and by such mo- 
tion get a way of transit through the course of discipline 
we want. And then, as the discipline comes, chapter 
after chapter, sometimes heavy, almost never,-such as 





4 
F 
. 
4 


e 


OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 321 


we should choose for ourselves, it is to be our comfort, 
and a very considerable satisfaction besides, that we are 
on the move whither God sends us, and getting just the 
benefit he means to give us. In one view nothing is 
secure and abiding, just because nothing is made to be 
stationary. The present is transitory, the future uncer- 
tain, but not because God chooses, for some inscrutable 
reason, to put us sighing over the mutabilities. The 
question was between having something done here, and 
having nothing done; between having events coming 
out in progressions, and having neither events nor pro- 
gressions; between giving us some benefit in life, and 
setting us up as pasteboard men in a painted world, to 
find no use or real meaning in it. What is much bet- 
ter than that, and exactly contrary, God has ordained 
motion for us, transit, and, what is but another name 
for the same thing, grand mutations that are all to be 
our lessons. If, then, life, as we say, is a river, and 
creation itself is a flood; if nothing really zs to us but 
events or turnings out—changes that are always ending, 
never ended; if in this flood we live, and with it are 
borne along to the ocean; if the worlds can not stop 
rolling above us, or the winds settle round us; if our 
body is itself a river of circulation, flowing away and 
replacing itself every year; if one generation goeth and 
another cometh, all battling their way forward, wear- 
ing and worn, till their work is done; and then, if all 
this outward transition is but shaping and writing out 
a soul-history correspondent, changing the sky of the 


mind within, and setting it onward—feeling, fancy, 
144 


822 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


hope, will, all the myrmidon powers that play the 
phases of experience—through doings and comings-to- 
pass, that are seas of mutabilities within, but are steadily 
shaping, and meant to shape a character: if this, I say, 
is the motion God ordains, what better can we do than 
to bravely consent to it, and take the mutabilities, one 
and all, save the mutabilities of evil, in glad, strong 
welcome? 

No one fails to observe the general going on of the 
creation—the seasons, day and night, the moons, the 
tides, the breathings, the heart-beats, the soul itself not 
able to cease thinking when it sleeps—even as if the 
universal order were a clock, running to keep time; 
but it is not seen as distinctly as it might be, that in- 
numerable, ever-progressing mutabilities are involved 
in it. Not a thing can be to-day where it was yester- 
day; the past is vanishing, the future is coming, and it 
can not be that many things we value and cling to will 
not, in one way or another, go by even as we go our- 
selves. Property, friends, expectations, foundations— 
every thing we value—is in transit ; and if it does not 
wholly go by at-some particular minute, it will change 
color, fall into new relations, and be so far modified 
that we can hardly think it the same. In this general 
economy of motion it is impossible that the changes 
should not sometimes take us off our feet, or crowd us 
to the wall; and it will be none the worse, or any thing 
to put us whimpering or complaining, if they do. New 
chapters are wanted, and if the last new chapter is dif- 
ferent from the one preceding, it will probably be all 


OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 323 


‘the better that it is. To be thrust out of fortune, or 
thrust into misfortune, is no so prodigious calamity, 
save where the man is weak; and then the misfortune 
is probably just the thing that is needed to put a little 
strength into his weakness. But if he gets heart-sick 
easily, and sinks into the condoling and complaining 
mood, he can not be said to be unmanned by it, for in 
fact he only was not manned before. 

I wish it were also possible for these afflicted people 
who are so easily disturbed and made anxious by the 
little mutations or seeming losses of their life, to see 
how intolerable their condition would be if they were, 
in fact, glued fast in a motionless position, and corm- 
pelled to simply stay. After awhile they would begin 
to sigh for some kind of relief from the tedium of their 
immobility. Only let there be some stir, they would 
say; let this dreary monotony take in something to 
give a sense of change. What we call fortune gets to 
be a bore, if it brings no changes, but merely keeps up 
for us the stale rounds of comfort—the dress, the house, 
the furniture ; the same table, and tax-bill, and grocer’s 
bill; the same coach and the same driver, and the same 
dull-looking, stereotyped faces, called our friends. We 
want something to change color. It would even be a 
relief to lose something; to be less fully supplied, and 
get a new motive for economy; no matter if it be a 
little more anxious economy, or more nearly pinched 
with want. To have only made a bad indorsement, 
and lost one’s means by it, is better, a great deal, than 
to have the fixity of a stone. To get no sense of mo- 


32-4 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


tion, no stage of transit, is inexpressibly wearisome 
And it will not do to be delicate as to the kind of 
transit we are to have. If it is not pleasant or agree- 
able, it is not half as unpleasant or disagreeable as none 
atall would be. Even passing out of a good and losing 
it is better than to be a petrifaction in it, or to have it 
petrified about us. What kind of time would plants 
have, in the most splendid herbarium in the world, if __ 
only a very little sense and vitality were left in them, 
when so booked ? 
But a great many of the mutabilities we complain 
of, it will be remembered, are occasioned by the wrongs 
that rob, or sting, or betray us. Even so, and we have | 
it as a right, of course, to be dissatisfied with the wrong- 
doers, and deeply feel the injury we suffer from them. 
The insecurities, instabilities, and dark adversities of 
life, are largely due to perfidies and frauds in this man- 
ner. Simply to lose confidence in a friend is enough, 
sometimes, to change the whole cast of our condition— 
the revelation discovered takes away our expectation, 
eclipses the bright point of life, and changes the very 
color of the world. And we shall not feel it the less 
when it strips us of our property, breaks our credit, or 
invents insidious attacks on our good name. Still, even 
here, the mere changes we suffer, apart from their 
causes, ought not to be any so great part of our afflie- 
tion. The changes may be only great morai advan- 
tages to us, pushing us on to higher points of character 
than we could otherwise reach. As men judge, the 
being stripped of one’s property is a very great and sore 





OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 325 


calamity ; and yet, how many have been really created 
by it, in all that constitutes their noblest manhood! 
how many families that were going to be only pam- 
pered and softened by the condition of ease it gave 
them, girded to a manly habit and a grand overmaster- 
ing energy, which gives them a significance to them- 
selves otherwise never to be attained! If they had 
been thus stripped by lightning, and not by human 
wrong, the change itself would have been the same, 
and perhaps they will get a very great additional ad- 
vantage when it has been done by wrong, in the fact 
that it gives them a more wary apprehension of what 
may be looked for in mankind, and sets them in a 
closer way of exactness themselves, as regards the 
keeping of their integrity. An over-implicit or over- 
facile trust in men is a very great practical weakness, 
and many can afford to be cured of it at almost any 
cost. It begets, in fact, a moral weakness, that offers 
itself to be preyed on by every sort of cunning or bad 
association. All evil is perfidy at bottom, and we can 
not be too soon aware that some kind of perfidy is 
always likely to be working in it. All the worse sign 
is it for us, when defrauded or betrayed by wrong, to 
shut our eyes, instead of letting them be opened, and 
fall to moaning over the sad uncertainties and muta- 
bilities of earthly things. All such dreary sentimental- 
izing is weakness. How much better to remember 
that, if we have been troubled and thrown out of con- 
dition by others, we have not been by any fault of 
honor and truth, or any sort of vice, in ourse:ves. In 


326 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


that noble consciousness it ought to be much that we 
can firmly rest. 

Thus far we deal with only the minor and subordinate 
conditions of the subject, such as lie more nearly in the 
common field of thought and observation concerning it ; 
he principal matter still remains. 

What we have been saying of motion, transition, pro- 
gression, and shifting discipline of experience, needed 
for the consolidation of character, is true, and the moral 
uses of the instabilities or mutabilities of time are suf- 
ficiently evident, even if we look no further. But there 
is another kind of use, or class of uses, which is deeper 
and more nearly fundamental, growing out of the rela- 
tions of these mutable conditions to a future condition 
both immutable and immortal. We are put to sea, we 
shall find, in the mutable, that we may reach the im- 
mutable, which is only a true version of the immortal. 
There is a very close connection, as will thus appear, 
between the dark and lowering instabilities we so much 
complain of, and so resolutely fight against, and the 
idea discovered of our immortality ; between it also, 
and the practical bent of our life in that direction. 

1. These mutabilities give us the idea, and so the ac- 
cepted and established fact of immortality. Let us see 
it we can trace the manner of the process. 

Nothing is more commonly observed than the im- 
mense eagerness of mankind to get away from the 
mutations, or above the mutabilities, of their mortal 
condition. Not less observable is the unregulated sen- 
sibility by which the less resolute, less firmly tempered 


OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 327 


souls are so piteously distressed, when their seeming 
foundations begin to be shaken or shattered by some 
kind of disaster. And the true explanation is, that 
every moral nature has belongings to a state that is really 
above mutation ; so that when it casts off the bond, or 
forgets the grand affinities that should fasten it there, 
it is turned to look after some kind of anchorage in the 
mutable that will answer its want. Hence the panic 
we suffer in our losses; hence the indefatigable indus- 
tries and the prodigiously strenuous works that engage 
us. The zest, the passion, the infatuation, we may 
almost say, of our endeavor is, to so far get above 
causes, or get the command of causes, as to fix or 
fasten our own future. And the pitch of tension to 
which we are often raised in this endeavor is even 
frightful—as if the strain of it must sometime snap the 
cords of life itself. And then we make up our account 
of the fact, by saying that man pursues the mortal with 
the zeal of a nature immortal. In which we are right, 
only we do not perceive as distinctly as we might, that 
this fact of immortality is a fact that gets both its evi- 
dence and enforcement, at the precise point of antago- 
nism between the mutable and the immutable. The 
real first question is not immortality, as we commonly 
assume, but immutability ; for the sense of our ever- 
duringness comes through no speculation about the 
matter of dateless continuance, but through what ger- 
minations we have in us, and what experiences we get, 
of the immutable. It is morally and not speculatively 
pronounced in us. As a mere opinion, or intellectually 


328 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


discovered fact, it is nothing. No argument of that 

kind ever made the smallest approach to proving it. 
But the grand mutation element in which we live is 
continually heaving us upon it, and compelling us to — 
have it as in fact, whether we have it as in opinion — 
or not. We have no thought of immortality, it may 
be, but only of something to be gotten out of the 
mutable that shall be as good as immutable; some pro- 
visioning of a perfectly sure state, such as no mischances 


and changes can overset or shake. In these prodigious — 


throes of endeavor that keep the world astir, we are 
scorning the mutabilities and pressing toward the 
changeless. Our effort is absurd, as being in the plane 
of mere temporalities, but it proves our want of the im- 
mutable, and so our immortal capacity. Having a 
nature packed full of possibilities and fore-reaching 
affinities for a morally immutable condition, we are 
thus tremendously moved by aspirations toward it after 
it is lost. Seeing every thing in transit about us, we 
still go on to build the untransitory in it, moaning 
feebly when it seems to be sliding from under us, or 
striving, in all hugest endeavor, to fasten a foundation 
that can not slide. And the result is that our mutabili- 
ties, of which we so often complain, are proving always 
the sublimity of their uses, by crowding us toward the 
immutable state we do not even dare to think of, and the 
immortal state we think of, but can only faintly believe. 

We exist here in a double connection ; first, with 
the transitory on one side, and, secondly, with the un- 
transitory on the other; and we fare, as many other 





OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 829 


creatures do that are made for two distinct elements, 
coming into distress in one element, the moment they 
lose connection with the other. The sponge, for ex- 
ample, gets its food and life from the fluid, ever-moving 
waters of the sea ; but it must be also fastened to some 
rock that does not move, and gives firm anchorage to 
it in the waters. And then, if by any mischance it is 
detached from its hold, it floats away, driven loosely 
by the unstable element, and is actually drowned by 
the very waters that were to give it feeding and main- 
tain its growth. The bird has wings connecting it 
with the air, and feet on which it takes the ground for 
rest, or settles in firm hold on its perch for the sleep of 
the night. But if it wanders too far seaward on its 
fickle elements, or is driven wildly out by the tempest, 
it gets bewildered, and settles weary and heart-sick on 
the deck of some ship espied from afar, submitting to 
be taken by the hands. Trees get their feeding largely 
from the air and the light, in which their foliage so recep- 
tively spreads itself, and their limbs so gracefully play. 
But they must have their roots also taking firm hold 
of the ground, by these to be localized and kept erect 
and steady in the storms. And when the changing 
season tinges them in sad colors above, and finally 
strips them bare, they so far seem to even die; only 
holding fast their clinch upon the frozen earth with 
their numbed, icy fingers—even as a diver holds his 
breath in the water—till the summer light and heat 
return to quicken their life. By these and other like 
feekle analogies we conceive the double state of man, 


330 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


connected on one side with infinite mutabilities in 
things, and on the other with immutable ideas and 
truths and God; so that if he undertakes to get on 
apart from these latter, to be fed on the transitory, 
established in the ficklenesses, or to get firm footing in 
the cloudland of weather and storm, he must do what 
neither sponge, nor bird, nor tree was ever able—make 
the transitory constant, and the mutable as good and 
sure as the immovable. 

But we must have a closer and more critical inspec- 
tion of this matter. Immutability is a character that 
is commonly reserved for God, as being his exclusive 
right or possibility; and there may even seem to be 
some want of reverence in the supposition that it can 
at all belong to man as a human attainment. That 
depends entirely on the question whether God’s immu- 
tability is grounded in his quantities, or in his prin- 
ciples. If it is grounded in his quantities, like his 
omniscience or omnipotence, and belongs in that way 
to his infinite magnitudes, then, of course, it is impos- 
sible for any creature. If it is grounded in his prin- 
ciples, if it is a moral and no mere natural attribute, 
then it may belong as well to any creature who can be 
established in the same principles; the very object of 
his training, too, may be to get him thus established. 
And when this is done, when he is gotten forever above 
temptation, clear of mental swervings or mutations, he 
is morally immutable. His integrity is perfect never, 
till it becomes immutability. Meantime, it will be 
difficult to find how God’s mere quantities should make 


OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 331 


him immutable without principles, or a state of moral 
fixity in them ; quite as difficult to find how the same 
fixity in the same principles should fail to make his 
creature immutable, for mere defect of quantity. 

It less easily occurs to us to think of immutability, 
as a character belonging to man, that he is visibly and 
consciously so far off, and so confusedly mixed with all 
the mutations of time. He is temptable in his best 
condition, so far mutable, and it is well if he does not 
show it by a good deal of sadly mutable practice. And 
yet it should not be incredible that he may have found 
his bearing in principles that do not change, in God 
who is forever as to-day, and so far has gotten the sure 
presentiment and germ of a perfectly unchanging chars 
acter, finally to be consummated. 

I think it likely, too, that the proposing of any such 
ideal for man’s attainment will be scarcely welcome to 
many. They will think of the immutable state as a 
kind of imprisonment, or stale monotony, where liber- 
ties are gone by, progressions ended, varieties excluded. 
When the mutations are all over, what will be left 
them, but to simply be falling into just that state we 
have described of insupportable tedium, that will make 
any kind of motion, or change, a relief. Whereas the 
supposed imprisonment will only be a state of fixity in 
principles, which principles will be themselves guaran- 
ties of unchanging liberty and progression, instigators 
of all highest action, fountains of all grandest muta- 
tions and varieties not evil, laws of eternally right 
motion. Nothing is excluded but the bad motions 


832 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


and double-minded caprices of a nature, warping and 
warped, swerving and swerved, under evil. Evil ex- 
cluded and gone, immutability is everywhere. 

Let us see, then, from the inventory of man’s gifts, 
by what furniture and outfit he is equipped for any 
such transcendent character. First, we have the fact, 
that certain great moral ideas, which are immutable and 
eternal, belong inherently to his moral nature itself, 
and assert their standard authority in it. To be aman 
is to think them, and not to think them is to be merely 
an animal; all men do in fact think them exactly alike. 
And when they bind, they bind us all alike. They are 
necessary and absolute. They can not be less or dif- 
ferent; rejected they stand, violated they are whole, 
In their own nature immutable, they assume the right 
to govern all mind, and whatever mind receives them 
so far passes out of the mutable. 

Take, for example, the truth-principle, the necessary, 
everlasting, ideal distinction between the true and the 
false. It can as little be debated, in a way of opinion, 
as the idea of space: it is absolute. If now any moral 
being accept this truth-principle, to live for the truth 
and by it, he becomes a principled man as regards all 
truth, in distinction from an unprincipled, or non-prin- 
cipled man. He is not settled, of course, in the knowl- 
edge of all particular truths. He may err a long time 
in opinions, or matters of fact; but being in the truth- 
principle, sworn to seek, and serve, and live and die 
for, the truth, he is polarized in that principle, and 
will settle his vibrations closer and closer, in all his 


_ 


OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 335 


discriminations, determinations, and faiths. Being 
fixed in the principle of truth-seeking, he is just so far 
a true man; whereas there are multitudes of men, it 
may be, holding vastly more true judgments and 
opinions and fewer errors than he, who are yet only 
governed by the market, or the school, or the church, 
and are really not true men at all, because there is ne 
immutable first principle in them of devotion to the 
truth for truth’s sake. They are clocks set by all other 
clocks, and not dials set for the sun. 

Exactly the same thing holds, in exactly the same 
manner, as respects the absolute, necessary, ideal dis- 
tinction of right and wrong. And the truly right man 
is not he that does prevailingly right things, according 
to the mos or common law moral of society, but he that 
takes the principle of right-doing to follow it implicitly, 
at any cost, and even when it puts him against society 
itself. All the repentances, sacrifices, and martyrdoms 
begin here, at the point of immutable right; but there 
are thousands of men who will be offended when they 
are not admitted to be properly righteous, who never 
took the ordeal of right-principle, to stand or fall with 
it, in their lives. All the right doings in which they 
please themselves are deferences to custom in the mu- 
table, never to the all-dominating sovereignty of right 
itself—immutable, everlasting right. This whole side 
of their moral nature, where its affinities are to prove 
their sublimity by conducting them inward where 
God’s own immutability rests, is ignored. They are 
virtuous men as far as the whiffling element of 


334 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


what the world calls virtue makes them so, but the — 


everlastingness of absolute right they know nothing of. 

The same is true as regards the more strictly religious, 
inborn relations of the soul with God. When it turns 
itself to God, it is not as when it came to its own moral 
ideas simply, but it comes to a being other than itself, 
before and over against itself. It is deing trusting itself 
to being, finite being to infinite being, in that also to 
be complemented and, as it were, infinited with it. 
Whereupon, as God is himself a nature supreme above 
all force or change by force, it gets the sense of touching 
bottom in the changeless. No man really believes in 
God, as in practical trust, in distinction from only 
believing some propositional matter concerning him, 
without having God verified to him as by consciousness 
—substance in substance—and then he will as certainly 
be fixed in the sense of his own ever-duringness; which 
ever-duringness is not the opinion, reasoned or gotten 
up, of his own immortality, but the sense, in fact, of 
being down upon, in and of the immutable. 

We perceive, in this manner, that the immutable is 
not as far off from our human nature as we commonly 
think; that our moral ideas and religious affinities stock 
us, so to speak, for the attainment, and that just here 
all our convictions of immortality get their spring. 
Immortality is nothing but the fact translated of im- 
mutable morality. We are so bound up with eternal 
ideas and God, that we have the fact of immortality by 
mora. impression. Feeding, or prepared to feed, on the 
eternal and immutable, feeling it stir within us ever 









OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 335 


more, we need not ask for it, or go after it to fetch it 
by wise argumentations; we have its certifying touch 
already felt in our consciousness. Besides, these muta- 
bilities in which our lives are mixed are turning us ever 
about, and driving us on, and crowding us in, where, in 
trying to get hold of the changeless, the changeless in 
a higher key gets hold of us. And we so begin to 
think our immortality as a fact of the understanding, 
because it is already upon us in power, in moral impres- 
sions back of the understanding. What we last and 
least imagine, the candidacy of our moral nature for 
the immutable becomes an awakened sense of it, which 
sense emerges, and takes form in thought or opinion, as 
a mentally discovered fact of immortality. Hence it 
is that we so readily believe it as a truth, when we 
make so poor a figure in maintaining it. We reason it 
from the immateriality of the soul; or from the great 
powers of mind, so scantily developed in this life; or 
from our unwillingness to cease and be no more; or 
from any worst, or best, of fifty other kinds of premise; 
but the short account of the matter is, that nature is 
beforehand with us, commanding us, so to speak, into 
immortality; commanding us, that is, into and by ever- 
lasting, absolute principles, even the same which anchor © 
God’s immutability itself; and, what is more, command- 
ing us home to God’s own infinite nature, there to be 
complemented in his ever-during sufficiency. Nature 
scorns, in this manner, all the speculative arguments, 
and puts it on us, going directly by both theologians 
and skeptics, to know our immortality, as we know the 


; 336 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


face of duty, or of God. What they teach, or reason, 
is a matter of comparatively small consequence, because 
the fact is already out, asking neither help nor consent 
from them. We pass now— 

2. To the more advanced position or use already 
suggested, viz., the fact that our instabilities, or mutable 
conditions, not only discover to us our inherently im- 
mortal nature, but so work upon us as to bend us 
practically toward the immortal state, as the only 
sufficiently wise end or satisfactory consummation of 
our life. 

We are set on thus, practically, toward the condi- 
tion of immutability by two kinds of impulse from the 
mutable state, a negative and a positive acting concur- 
rently. In the negative we have it discovered to us, 
that there is and can be no such reliable basis of 
expectation as we try for in things, and before coming 
into principles. Nothing short of immutability, whether 
we so think or not, really meets our want, and this we 
strike nowhere, save in the everlasting principles of 
duty, and the divine anticipations of religion. Whether 
it was possible to give a more reliable, and less fluctuat- 
ing, billowy character to mere things, 1 do not know; 
but if it was, I think we can see that we profoundly 
want just all the transitional, unsteady elements we 
have. There plainly must not only be motion, or 
transit, but there must be’surprises, iucaleulable somer- 
sets, infinite unreliabilities—all that we include in our 
weakest sighs of surrender, and stoutest wars of 
defiance to the fickleness of fortune—else we shall be 


OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 337 


only losing all the benefits of living, by rooting our 
selves down into the crevices of things, as trees in the 
clefts of the rocks, thinking so to es firm enough foot- 
hold in time. 

Hence the almost visibly contrived instabilities of 
the world; as if it were God's purpose to let every 
good of time shake us out of its lap. Reputation— 
what is it but a phantom that we are more likely to be 
anxious for, than to have by a secure title? Friends 
are not angels, and too often prove that they are more 
wisely suspected than trusted. Money—where shall 
we place it? The safe is not safe enough. The bank 
is scarcely better. The public securities are most 
insecure in the keeping. Short notes have wings that 
are long enough to fly away. Stocks are sometimes 
only wings without a body. Mortgages must be clear 
of liens going before, and fires and collapses of value 
coming after. Executors, guardians, agents, who can 
tell what breaches of trust they are concocting? So 
that no kind of footing, or property, or benefit of con- 
dition obtained, is sufficiently clear of risk to be entirely 
reliable. Unlooked for mischances will come, and a 
dozen mischances coming together will put their 
victim in a strait he never expected to see. Or suppose 
a man too firmly grounded in his wealth to be dis- 
turbed by any such combination of mischances, he is 
yet subject to other kinds of mischances, that will 
make his life more baseless and frail than any mere 
collapse in property. A profligate son, a daughter 
badly married, a wife hopelessly insane, secreted in a 


<ta 


838 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


hospital to die—any one, or all these together, show 
him how completely subject he still is to the mutabili- 
ties of time. Or, it-may be that he only suffers that 
most common of mortal disasters, the loss of his health, 
and when that goes, how incontinently vanish the de- 
lights of the senses, the joys of motion, the zests of 
enterprise ; and from that point onward the poor man, 
laden with so heavy spoils of fortune, is like a mule 
dragging in deep sands and getting no foothold. There 
is also a grand mischance, or king of mischances, whose 
shadow, riding by, we often think we see, and the 
touch of whose fell finger, we know, sends us quickly 
away. Our very world-element, in short, is fickleness, 
and if we try to make it firm by the firm hold we put 
on it, straws are only straws, though we clutch them 
ever so tightly. 

There is very little use in sentimentalizing, or mop- 
ing in sad complaints, over these fugacious, baseless 
things in which we have our experience. They are all 
very soberly meant, very deliberately planned for us. 
If God could have made things stand more securely, as 
we are apt to believe, he certainly has not done it, and 
has not for the wisest and best reasons. We could not 
plainly be trained for immortality in a time-element 
that is itself as good and reliable as immortality. It 
must not be as good and reliable, else we shall contrive 
to stay in it. If we are to let go of it and rise to some- 
thing higher, we must see it to be hollow, treacherous, 
uncertain, unreliable, insufficient, and then we are so 
far clear of it, or even exclusively thrust forward by it. 


7 


OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 339 


But this mutable element is more than negatively 
good, as regards the choice of ends that belong to the 
immortal state; it works negatively that it may work 
positively, and exert a really introductive power. The 
changes we are passing, hour by hour, are all before the 
open gate of principle, showing us in, raising also wants 
to draw usin. Wants are wonderfully perceptive ; and 
the royal base-work of immutable order and rest, pre- 
pared in their nature itself, many will never find, till 
their ponderous wants, somehow developed, settle them 
down upon it. Hence also the mutabilities. God puts 
us at sea in them that we may get tired of them. It 
is not altogether ill to be at sea. The fire-gleams of 
the night, the mirages of the day, the sea-storm voice— 
deepest of all voices—the sceneries of the weather, the 
pomps of the waves, make up a world by themselves; 
but the painful thing is, and it is more and more felt, 
and grows more and more wearisome, that there is no 
fixity, nothing but change, the very feet grow sick of 
it, aching, if but for a single hour, to get the touch of 
some foundation. The plays of change that, for a time, 
were interesting, grow dull and stale and dreary, and 
the wonder is, at last, that so many fine things came 
to pass in the beginning of the voyage, and none at all 
now. Finally, if the voyage is a long one, or the ship 
gets disabled, the simple word shore comes to have 4 
kind of paradise in it. When shall it be seen? Shall 
it ever be seen? Why not put ourselves to the oars and 
try for it? Just so it is that men get weary and sick 
in the mutabilities. And it does not make much 


230 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


difference, whether they suffer losses, or get on by 
successes ; for they have about the same sense of inse- 
curity or unsteadiness in one, that they have in the 
other, and get sick and hungry in about the same de- 
gree. Only there are some who will never get away 
from things far enough to embrace principles, till some 
final sweep of calamity strips all things away; never 
come unto God, till, by some great storm, they are 
virtually wrecked on him. Then for the first time, 
when they touch him, so to speak, with their feet, and 
rest on him, do they begin to know what a coming to 
land itis to trust him. All true-born souls are brought 
ashore in this manner, on the continental principles of 
duty and religion. What we call the world-element, 
unsteady and mutable as the sea, is no finality for them, 
but they are put in it, as a merely transitional chapter, 
to be inducted, and pressed inward, and downward, 
upon real foundations—the immutable, the immortal. 
It is also a very great positive benefit, in this school- 
ing of the mutable state, that it gives us the fact of 
immortality, not as a speculation, but as a grand, over- 
towering moral impression. We take it up because 
everlasting principles are heaving in us. Our sense of 
God contains it, and gives it a wide, warm bosom. 
Let a human creature reason out some wise conclusion 
of the head in this matter, and project his mole-eye 
sight far enough into words to fetch eternities out of 
them, and then, having got his wise opinion set in the 
conclusion that he is certainly immortal, let him put 
himself to the use of it, and see how much, or little 





OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 341 


rather, it will mean. It will be such a flickering light, 
such a feeble and cold moonshine out of eternity, as to 
engage no earnest feeling, carry no strong impulse. 
These speculated notions of immortality are, in fact, 
often a hinderance and no help. Whereas the immor- 
tality that has come out through the gate of immutanle 
mortality, that which has thundered in the soul’s mora 
ideas and affinities for God, that which, coming before 
all speculation, has raised the plane of the man, and 
made him a superior creature, will have a glorious, 
almost glorifying power. It has a positive moral 
meaning, next akin to the sense of immutability itself, 
though probably never so conceived, and the soul 
hastens longingly toward it, as its continental Rest and 
Home. 

Besides, this morally felt immortality will be always 
waking to consciousness those moral wants and convic- 
tions that are closest to the standards of duty and 
religion. There is no exactly fit relation between 
mere world-sickness and a morally right life. It might 
about as well be expected that a man will make that 
kind of choice because he is work-sick or weary. There 
must be some moral quality in the want developed, 
else it has no relation to sucha result. But this moral 
quality will here seldom be wanting. There is such 
close company in souls between the want of stability 
and the principles that are to make it, that whoever 
gets weary and sick of the mutabilities can, with diffi- 
culty, exclude some pungent reflections on the neglect 
of those principles. It is possible, I grant, for a man 






342 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


to be crushed in his expectations, stripped by losses, — 
broken down by defeats, or, in a career of general 
auccess, to be utterly disgusted with the chaffy look of 
his gains, and yet to encounter no reflections on the 
moral significance of what he suffers. But there will 
be few such cases, and it will at least sometimes be seen, 
that men who are at the highest strain of their powers, 
and fighting in stoutest throes of endeavor, to conquer 
a reliable footing for their life, just there discover, and 
by that very means, the practical nonsense and wrong 
of their wild instigations ; that they are straining after 
foundations where there are none, and neglecting them 
where they are—this, too, because they are principles of 
duty and religion; such as have a right, in their own 
divine order, to be first accepted and acted from, and 
be themselves the footing of the life. Thoughts of this 
kind are never far off from the man who is delving, 
heart-sick and wearily, among the mutabilities, and he 
will not always be in a mood to repel them. He is far 
more likely to say, “I have been a fool and a prodigal. 
I forsook my Father—evil was the day—and now I 
will arise and go to my Father.” No man ever really 
embraces a principle that has been deserted without 
some contrition felt for the desertion of it. And there 
is a wonderful fitness in the incertitudes and cireum- 
gyrations of our mortal affairs, to bring us round, 
where the eternal love and order have their rest, with 
wills effectually tamed by self-discovery. They are a 
kind of sermon that all men hear at times, and they 
have it as their peculiar advantage, that they preach 


OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 343 


conviction out, so to speak, instead of preaching it in, 
and do it by a kind of power that wakens no jealousy. 

On the whole it will be seen, that what we call the 
baselessness of the world, and speak of with so little 
respect, is a really grand institution, adjusted for our 
moral benefit. If the light whifflings of its changes, 
the heavy and grim overturnings, the everywhere 
unsteady footings, put us all at sea, there is yet a 
continent hard by—principles immutable, and immuta- 
bility in principles. Human nature nowhere looks so 
great, capable of a footing so divinely solid and strong, 
as in precisely these contrived environments of change 
—pressing, all together, landward, and drawing us on, 
by their ceaseless mutations toward a base that. is 


changeless. 


XVL 


OF THE SEA. 


Hap it been given us to compose or settle the pro- 
portions of the world, there is probably no particular 
in which we should have differed the scheme of it more 
widely from the present, or now existing scheme, than 
in not allowing any so great amount of surface to be 
covered with water. It would not even occur to us that 
80 many, vast, outspreading seas and oceans—unfruit- 
ful, inhospitable, next to impassable—could have any 
fit place or use. Is it not a world for man to inhabit ? 
and is he not a creature wanting chiefly land—a soil 
to cultivate, a firm foundation to build upon, a steady 
footing of reaction for his works? Allowing a large 
supply for his economic uses, who can imagine that 
only oceans of waters will suffice? And what can he 
do with waters that are only brine, covering four-fifths, 
or nine-tenths of the world? Having it on hand to raise 
the best conditioned and most numerous possible herd 
of men, we should always be contriving how to enlarge 
the pasture. Instead of these immense water-deserts 
we should be laying out for as many and productive 
acres of land as possible. We should make the globe 
itself a good round ball of meadow and plowland. 


OF THE SEA. 345 


The leviathans would have to make room for the reap: 
ers, and if we could find how to keep the ground in 
good and safe drainage without seas, we should allow 
but one great floor of sontinent wrapping about the 
world ; which floor should be carpeted, in close order, 
with great flourishing empires. 

This would be our wisdom—God’s how different ! 
By him these great oceans are excavated, and the habit- 
able parts are islanded in narrow strips between them. 
It is as if he were planning vast regions of waste, that 
he may stint the fruitfulness, and set a bound to the 
populousness of his realms. The natural philosopher 
and man of science will doubtless have another account to 
give ; showing how the physical uses—the comforts, sup- 
plies, and populative capabilities of the world—depend 
on having just so large a portion of the land submerged. 
The sea, as he will represent, tempers the climate of 
the land, making the heat less intense and the cold 
less rigorous. It supplies, too, the rains that water the 
land and make it fruitful; furnishing also immense 
stores of provisions from its own pastures. All which 
may be true; though it does not follow that the same 
results could not have been accomplished in some other 
way. Mere physical uses or ends are never the final 
causes of things, and it will be difficult to imagine that, 
if God had been planning for the particular uses here 
specified—viz., how to provide the largest and best sup- 
plies for a great population—he ecnuld not have wid- 
ened vastly the spaces of land and made them tenfold 


more productive. We recollect here that God’s last 
15* 


346 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 


ends are always moral ends, and we seem therefore to 


see that, in this vast overspreading of seas, he is pre- 
paring the world, not so much for a physical, as for a 
moral habitation. And he seems, in this view, to be 
rather preferring to limit, than to extend the popula- 
tions provided for ; lest our school of virtue may be too 
large and too easily kept in supply, for the intended 
moral benefit. So he makes small the globe by reduc- 
tions of the existing spaces, narrowing down our 
field, not by the seas alone, but by rigors of frost, 
and deserts of sand, and mountains of rock; as if 
meaning to bring us into compass or compression, and 
set us in a discipline of toil and hardship for the due 
unfolding of our personal force, and the right establish- 
ing of our character. His fundamental assumption 
appears to be that, to such a being as man, virtue can 
be only a conquest. 

Prepared by considerations like these, we are now 
ready for the more deliberate inquiry, what are the 
moral uses of the sea, or in what respects does it appearto 
have been appointed for the moral benefit of the world? 
And I think it will appear, as we prosecute this in- 
, quiry, that the ordinance of the sea is so thoroughly 
interwoven with all that is of the highest interest to 
man—the progress of society, art, government, science, 
and religion; in a word, all that is included in moral 
advancement—that, without the sea, the world could 
hardly be considered a fit habitation for his use. 

One great problem of God, in building a school for 
man, was, how to distribute the school; for it is manifest 





— 


OF THE SEA. 347 


that no one government, or society, cuuld fill and occupy 
the whole domain—certainly not, without producing in- 
definite confusion, and sacrificing many of the most 
powerful stimulants to energy and advancement. Nei- 
ther could it be done, without exalting the throne or 
governing power to such a pitch of eminence as would 
probably command the religious homage of mankind, 
and make it the head of a universal Lamaism. But if 
the world is to be distributed into nations, or kingdoms 
—which are likely to be always jealous of each other and 
sometimes hostile—they need to be separated by natural 
barriers, such as will prevent strife by inclosing them 
within definite boundaries, and, when they are in 
actual strife, will fortify them against destruction one 
from the other. This is effected, in part, by interpos- 
ing mountains and rivers, but more effectually, and on 
a iarger scale, by spreading seas and oceans between 
them. For there is, in fact, no maxim of the poets, 
often cited, more utterly destitute of foundation, or more 
unjust to Providence, than Cowper’s well-meant lines :— 
“ Mountains interposed 
Make enemies of nations, who had else, 
Like kindred drops, been mingled into one;” 
for mountains are the well defined boundaries, rather, 
and pacificators of nations. Oceans and great bodies 
of water have the still further advantage, that they can 
be passed more easily for purposes of convenience than 
for those of destruction. Indeed, it is impossible for 
whee nations to pour their military hordes across them, 
as across a mere geographical line. Nature is here the 


348 MORAL USES OF DARK THIN 


grand distributor and fortifier of nations. She draws — 


her circle of waters, not around some castle or fortified 
citadel of art, but around whole nations themselves, 
Then it is within these fortified circles of nature, that 
nations are to unfold their power and have their 
advancement. Such was Greece, cut off from all the 
world by boundaries of rock and water, which no 
Xerxes with his invading army could effectually pass; 
having, at the same time, enough of strife and struggle 
within to keep her on the alert, and waken all her 
powers to vigorous exercise. Such is England now. 
England, for so many ages past the foremost light of 
Europe, the bulwark of law, the great temple of 
religion, could never have been what it is, or any thing 
but the skirt of some nation comparatively undistin- 
guished, had not the Almighty drawn his circle of 
waters around it, and girded it with strength, to be the 
right hand of his power. It is the boundaries of nations, 
too, that give them locality and settle those historie 
associations which are the conscious life of society and 
the source of all great and high emotions; otherwise 
they fly to perpetual vagrancy and dissipation—there is 
no settlement, no sense of place or compression, and, as 
nothing takes root, nothing grows. Thus the ancient 
Scythian, roaming over the vast levels of the North, is 
succeeded by the modern Tartar—both equally wild 
and uncultivated, the father of three thousand years 
ago and the son of to-day. 

Again it will be found that the oceans and seas have 
sometimes contributed, beyond all power of estimation, 





| 
! 





OF THE SEA. 849 


to the moral and social advancement of the race, by 
separating one part of the world even from the knowl- 
edge of another, and preserving it for discovery and 
occupation at an advanced period of history. Had the 
territory of the United States been conjoined to the 
eastern shore of Asia, or the western of Europe, or had 
there been no oceans interposed to break the continu- 
ous circle of land, it is obvious that the old and worn- 
out forms of civilization would have wanted a spur to 
reform and improvement that is now supplied. When, 
at length, the new world was discovered, then were the 
race called out, as it were, to begin again. The tram- 
mels of ancient society and custom, which no mere 
human power could burst, were burst by the fiat of 
Providence, and man went forth to try his fortunes 
once more, carrying with him all the advantages of a 
previous experience. We set up here no invidious 
claim of precedence. We acknowledge our rawness and 
obscurity, in comparison with the splendor and high 
refinement of more ancient nations. We only claim it 
as our good fortune that we are a new nation, peopled 
by men of a new world, who had new principles to be 
tested, for the common benefit of mankind. As such 
the eye of the world is upon us, and has been for many 
years. The great thought of our institutions—the hap- 
piness and elevation of the individual man—is gradu- 
ally and silently working its way into all the old fab- 
rics of legitimacy in Christendom, and compelling the 
homage of power in all its high places. Whatever 
motion there has been in European affairs for the last 


350 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


half century—all the mitigations of law, the dynasties 
subverted, the constitutions conceded, the enlarged lib- 
erty of conscience and the press, popular education, 
every thing that goes to make society beneficent—has 
been instigated, more or less directly, by the great idea 
that is embodied and represented in the institutions of 
the United States. This same great idea, the well- 
being and character of the individual man, has been 
brought forth, too, to offer itself to the world, at just 
the right time. Without it, we may well doubt 
whether the institutions of Europe had not come to 
their limit, beyond which they had not, in themselves, 
any power of advancement. Had it come earlier, 
Europe was not ready for it. The immense advantage 
that is thus to accrue to mankind, as regards the great 
interests of truth, society, and religious virtue, from 
the fact that our western hemisphere was kept hidden 
for so many ages beyond an impassable ocean, to be 
opened, in due time, for the planting and propagation 
of new ideas, otherwise destined to perish, no mind can 
estimate. Nor is this process of planting yet exhausted. 
There are islands in the southern oceans larger than 
England, that are yet to become seats of power and of 
empire, and possibly to shine as lights of Antarctic his 
tory eclipsing those of the North; or, if not eclipsing, 
giving to all the northern climes, both of the eastern 
and western worlds, the experiment of new principles 
needful to their progress and happiness. 

But it is another and yet more impressive view of 
the moral utility of seas and oceans, that, while they 


4 


: 


OF THE SEA. 361 


have a disconnecting power operating in the ways first 
specified, they have at the same time a connecting 
power, bringing all regions and climes into correspond- 
ence and commercial interchange. Fortified by oceans 
and seas against injury from each other, they are yet 
united by the same for purposes of mutual benefit. 
Were there no seas, were the globe covered by a con- 
tinuous sheet of land, how different the history of the 
past from what it has been! how different the moral 
and intellectual state of human society from what it now 
is! There being no medium of commerce, save that of 
land travel, no intercourse could exist between nations 
remote from each other. They would know each other 
only by a kind of tradition, as now we know the past. 
Tradition, too, in its long and uncertain transit dcross 
the longitude of the world, would clothe itself in fable, 
and we, instead of being made to feel the common 
brotherhood of man as now, should probably be fast in 
the belief that the opposite hemisphere of the world is 
peopled by giants, centaurs, anthropophagi, and such 
like fabulous monsters. There would, of course, be no 
commerce, except between nations that are adjacent; 
and society, being life without motion or stimulus, 
wou.d rot itself down into irredeemable bigotry and de- 
crepitude. God would not have it so. On the ocean, 
which is the broad public highway of the Almighty, 
nations pass and repass, visit and revisit each other, 
and those which are remote as freely as those whick are 
near. And it is this fluid element that gives fluidity 
and progress to the institutions and opinions of the race. 


3852 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


It is only in the great inland regions of the world, as in 
Central Africa and Asia, that bigotry and inveterate 
custom have their seat. In these vast regions that 
never saw the sea, regions remote from the visits of 
commerce and the moving world, men have lived 
from age to age without progress, or the idea of prog- 
ress, crushed under their despotisms, held fast in the 
chains of indomitable superstition, rooted down like 
their trees, and motionless as their mountains. In the 
mean time, the shores and islands of the world have 
felt the pulse of human society, and yielded themselves 
to progress. It is, in a word, this fluid sea, on whose 
bosom the free winds of heaven are wafting the world’s 
commerce, which represents all mobility and progress 
in the human state. Without this interposed, the rock- 
based continents themselves were not more fixed than 
the habits and opinions of mankind. On the other 
hand, we observe that the prejudices of men who live 
upon and by the waters are never invincible. They 
admit of change, somewhat by habit and association, 
as their element changes, and they shift their sail to the 
winds. It was never a Babylon, or a Timbuctoo, or 
any city of the inland regions, that was forward to 
change and improvement. But it was a Tyre, queen 
of the sea; a Carthage, sending out her ships, beyond 
the Pillars of Hercules, to Britain and the Northern 
Isles; an Athens, an Alexandria—these were the seats 
of art, and thought, and learning, and liberal improve- 
ment of every sort. So, too, it was the Italian com- 
mercial cities that broke up the dark ages, and gave 


4 


OF THE SEA. 353 


the modern nations that impulse which set them for- 
ward in their career of art and social refinement, and, 
remotely speaking, of liberty. 

The spirit of commerce, too, is the spirit of peace, 
its interest the interest of peace, and peace is the ele- 
ment of all moral progress, as war is the element of all 
barbarism and desolation. Every ship that sails the 
ocean is a pledge for peace to the extent of its value; 
every sail a more appropriate symbol of peace than the 
olive-branch itself. Commerce, too, has at length 
changed the relative position of nations. Once upon a 
footing of barbarism, they are now placed on a foot- 
ing of friendship and civilization. In the most splendid 
days of Athens, piracy was a trade, not a crime ; for it 
wag the opinion that nations were naturally hostile, and 
will, of course, prey upon each other. But now, at 
length, commerce has created for itself a great system 
of international and commercial law, which, to a certain 
extent, makes one empire of all the nations, maintain- 
ing the rights of person and property, when abroad upon 
the ocean, or in other lands, as carefully and efficiently 
as if there were but one nation or people on the globe. 
Search the history of man, from the beginning till now, 
you will find among all the arts, inventions and institu- 
tions of the race, no one so beneficent, none that reveals 
so broad a stride of progress, as this. And it promises 
yet to go on, extending its sway, tillit has given rules to 
all the conduct of nations, provided redress for all inju- 
ries, and thus lawed out forever all war from the earth. 

The nations engaged in commerce will, of course 





354 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 


be most rapidly improved, and become the most forward — 
nations. In perpetual intercourse with each other, 
they will ever be adopting the inventions, copying the 
good institutions, and rectifying the opinions, one of 
another; for the man of commerce is never a bigot. 
He goes to buy, in other nations, commodities that are 
wanted in his own. He is, therefore, in the habit of 
valuing what is valuable in other countries, and so, 
proportionally, is the people or nation that consumes 
the commodities of other countries. And so much is 
there in this, that the government, the literature, nay, 
even the religion of every civilized nation, must receive 
a modifying influence from all the nations with whom 
it maintains an active commerce. In opinions, liter- 
ature, arts, laws—nay, in every thing—they must 
gradually approximate, till they coalesce, at last, in 
one and the same catholic standard of value and excel- 
lence. Commerce is itself catholic, and it seems to be 
the sublime purpose of God, in its appointment, to 
make every thing else so, that as all are of one blood, 
so, at last, they shall be one conscious brotherhood. 
In the mean time, the nations most forward in art 
and civilization are approaching, by the almost omni- 
present commerce they maintain, all the rude and 
barbarous nations of the world, carrying with them, 
wherever they go, all the tokens of precedence by 
which these nations may be most impressed with a 
sense of their backwardness, and set forward in a 
career of improvement. They need only be visited by 
the ships, or especially the steam-vessels, of European 


OF THE SEA. 355 


commerce, to see that they are in their childhood, and 
there must remain, except as they adopt the science 
and the institutions of European nations. What, con- 
sequently, do we behold? Not the wilds of Northern 
Russia only, not the islands only of the sea becoming 
emulous of European laws and arts and manners; but 
the throne of Siam inquiring after the methods and 
truths of the West; all British India studying Eng- 
lish, in a sense more real than the study of words; 
Muscat sending over to examine and copy our arts; 
both branches of the Mohammedan empire receiving 
freely, and carefully protecting Christian travelers, and 
adopting, as fast as they can, the European modes of 
war and customs of society; China, shaken with the 
rough hand of civilized war, and moved with a far 
deeper respect by the approaches of Christian trade 
and justice, accepting a Western republican to be her 
general embassador, and seek out for her once celestial 
empire the advantages of an acknowledged relationship 
with all the more forward. nations. All this by the 
power of commerce. They feel our shadow cast on 
their weakness, and their hearts sink within them as 
if they had seen a people taller than they. For the 
same reason, too, the false gods are trembling in their 
seats the world over, and all the strongholds of spirit- 
ual delusion shaking to the fall. The sails of commerce 
are the wings of truth. Wherever it goes—and where 
does it not #—the power of science, and all that belongs 
to cultivated manhood, is felt. The universal air be- 
comes filled with new ideas, and man looks ont from 


356 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


the prison of darkness in which he has been lying — 
chained and blinded, sees a dawn arising on the world, 
and feels the morning-breath of truth and liberty. 
What we have said, in this gereral way, of human 
advancement, as connected with the uses of the sea, 
involves religious advancement, both as regards knowl- 
edge and character. All the advancement, too, of 
which we have spoken, is, in one view, the work of 
Christianity ; for this it is which has given to Christ- 
endom its precedence. And it is precisely the office 
of the Christian faith that it shall thus elevate and 
bless mankind ; bless them, not in their devotions only, 
not in their sacraments, or in passing to other worlds, 
but in every thing that constitutes their mortal life—in 
society, art, science, wealth, government—all that 
adorns, elevates, fortifies, and purifies their society. 
We also perceive that the very tone of Christian piety 
itself, especially where it is not tempered, as in the 
United States, by the presence and toleration of all 
varieties of faith and worship, needs to be modulated 
and softened by the influence of a general intercourse 
with mankind ; for such is the narrowness of man, that 
even the love of Christ itself is in perpetual danger of 
dwindling to a bigot prejudice in the soul; mistaking 
its mere forms for substance ; becoming less generous 
in its breadth, the more intense it is in degree; and 
even measuring out the judgment of the world by the 
thimble in which its own volume and dimensions are 
east. The church can never attain to its proper power 
and beauty till it has become thoroughly catkolic in 





OF THE SEA. 357 


its spirit; a result which is to be continually favored 
and assisted by the influence of a catholic commerce. 
In this manner we anticipate a day for man, when 
commerce itself shall become religious, and religion 
commercial; when the holy and the useful shall be 
blended in a common life of brotherhood and duty, 
comprising all the human kindred of the globe. 

The oceans and their commerce have indeed no 
Christian power in themselves, but they make a con- 
tribution to religion of inestimable value, in what they 
do to prepare a way for the Christian power. They 
quell the prejudices of the nations, and shame away 
all confidence in their gods and institutions, and then 
the Church of God, as the ground is cleared, or being 
cleared, comes in to fill the chasm that is made, by 
offering a better faith. What, then, do we see, but 
that the ocean is becoming the pathway of the Lord? 
He goes forth among the nations, and their courage 
dies before him! The islands give up first, the con- 
tinents must follow! One thing is always sure, either 
commerce must fold up its sails, and the ocean dry up 
in its bed (which few will expect), or else every form 
of idolatry and barbarous worship must cease from 
the world. This I say apart from all the Christian 
efforts and instrumentalities supplied by missions; for 
these are as yet insignificant, compared with those 
mighty workings of Providence whose path is in the 
sea. But if these precede, those must follow. As man is 
a religious being, God will never undertake to rob him 
of a false religion without giving him a better. Neither 


358 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


can any Christian mind contemplate the rapid and 
powerful changes which, in our day, have been wrought 
in the practical position of the heathen nations, with- 
out believing that some great design of Providence is 
on foot, that promises the universal spread of the 
Christian faith and the spiritual redemption of all the 
races of mankind. “ Lift up thine eyes round about 
and see, they all gather themselves together, they come 


unto thee! The abundance of the sea shall be con- 


verted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come 
unto thee !” 

The sea has yet another kind of moral and religious 
use, which is more direct and immediate. The liquid 
acres of the deep, tossing themselves evermore to the 
winds, and rolling their mighty anthem round the 
world, may be even the most valuable and productive 
acres God has made. Great emotions and devout affec- 
tions are better fruits than corn, more precious luxuries 
than wine or oil, And God has built the world with a 
visible aim to exercise his creatures with whatever is 
lofty in conception, holy in feeling, and filial in pur- 
pose toward himself. All the trials and storms of the 
land have this same object. To make the soul great, 
he gives us great dangers to meet, great obstacles to 
conquer. Deserts, famines, pestilences walking in dark- 
ness, regions of cold and wintry snow, hail and tem- 
pest—none of these are, in his view, elements of waste 
and destruction, because they go to fructify the moral 
man. As related to the moral kingdom of God, they 
are engines of truth, purity, strength, and alJ that is 


OF THE SEA. 359 


great and holy in character. The sea is a productive 
element of the same class. It is even a great moral 
educator; and the world, for so many ages patiently 
enduring, bravely daring, and kept steadily contriving 
to get the mastery of it, becomes, at last, step by step 
and slowly, another world; having all courage, and 
force, and manly science, compacted and close-knit by 
the stern motherhood of the sea. Meantime, how many 
here have bowed, who never bowed before, to the tre- 
mendous sovereignty of God? How many prayers, 
otherwise silent, have gone up, to fill the sky and circle 
the world, from wives and mothers, imploring his pro 
tecting presence with husbands and sons they have 
trusted to the deep? It is of the greatest consequence, 
too, that such a being as God should have images pre- 
pared to express him, and set him before the mind of 
man in all the grandeur of his attributes. These he 
has provided in the heavens and the sea, which are the 
two great images of his vastness and power; the one, 
remote, addressing itself to cultivated reason and 
science; the other nigh to mere sense and physically 
efficient, a liquid symbol of the infinitude of God. It 
is remarkable, too, how many of the best and most 
powerful images of God in the Scripture are borrowed 
from the sea. “ Canst thou by searching find out God? 
The measure thereof is longer than the earth and 
broader than the sea.” “Thy judgments are a great 
deep.” “Which alone spreadeth out the heavens and 
treadeth upon the waves of the sea.” “Thy way is in 
the sea, and thy path in the great waters.” “ The 


860 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 


waters saw thee, O Lord, the waters saw thee; they 
were afraid, the depths also were troubled!” Every 
kind of vastness—immensity, infinity, eternity, mys- 
tery, omnipotence—has its type in the sea, and there 
is as much more of God in the world for man to see 
and feel as the sea can express, and as much more of 
worship and piety as there is of God. 

The sea, then, as we now clearly perceive, is not 
waste land; no other part of God’s territory is more 
productive. Not too soon, then, did he arrest the sub- 
siding waters of the new creation; for he was contriv- 
ing, we perceive, not the physical abundance, but the 
moral benefit and blessing of the world. He did not 
make the seas too large. He laid them where they 
should be. He swept their boundaries with his finger 
in the right place. The floods are mighty, but the Lord 
is mightier; they lift up their voice, but not too high, 
to lift the courage and exalt the mastery of man. They 
have been always, and are more and more visibly to be, 
the general clearing-house of the trade of the world, 
They are highways laid for the running to and fro of the 
great last day of knowledge, and of universal brother- 
hood complete. No more leviathan only, but God’s swift 
truth, “maketh the deep to boil, and the sea like a 
pot of ointment.” No more a symbol only, it is also 
the medium, between so many coasts, of God’s uni- 
versal beneficence. He saw, in the beginning, that it 
was good, and now we see it also; and all kindred and 
people that dwell upon its shores, and hear it lift up its 
voice, respond to the anthem it raises to its Author. 


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